Met Gala Watches Steal the Spotlight, From Jacob & Co. to Cartier Crash

The carpet's sharpest accessory was a watch

The loudest luxury statement at the 2026 Met Gala was not a gown but a watch. On Monday, May 4, 2026, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the “Fashion is Art” dress code met a benefit that bankrolls the Costume Institute’s exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and operations, and the wrists ended up carrying as much cultural weight as the tailoring. Dwayne Johnson’s first Met Gala appearance, with a Jacob & Co. Billionaire III valued at about $3 million to $3.3 million, set the tone for a night when timepieces became the real status markers.

That mattered because this was never just a celebrity photo op. Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour co-chaired the evening, with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos as honorary chairs, while Zoë Kravitz, Anthony Vaccarello, Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Gwendoline Christie, and others filled out the host committee. The entire event sat inside the museum’s spring 2026 exhibition, Costume Art, which opened on May 10, 2026 and runs through January 10, 2027, so the watch conversation felt perfectly aligned with the night’s premise: clothing, art, and status as a single visual language.

Why the wrist mattered as much as the tux

The 2026 gala was widely read as one of the strongest red-carpet watch moments in recent memory because the selections were not random bling. They ranged from ultra-rare collector pieces to watches with enough design history to be recognized instantly by serious enthusiasts, which is exactly why the carpet felt sharper than a simple logo parade. Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Cartier, Omega, Hublot, Bulgari, Chanel, Breitling, IWC, and Jaeger-LeCoultre all had a presence in the mix, a reminder that luxury horology now operates as part art object, part social signal.

That spread also explained why the night traveled so well online. A celebrity can wear a beautiful jacket and disappear into the crowd, but a watch lets the viewer zoom in, compare, and decode. The Met Gala has become one of the few places where a red carpet can function like a collector’s salon, with vintage pieces, modern complications, and diamond-heavy showpieces all competing for the same burst of attention.

Dwayne Johnson’s Billionaire III was the headline trophy

Dwayne Johnson’s Jacob & Co. Billionaire III was the watch everyone circled first, and for good reason. Set with 714 white diamonds totaling 129.61 carats, it was repeatedly described as a $3 million to $3.3 million timepiece, and some coverage placed it among only 18 ever made. Those are the kinds of numbers that turn a watch into a talking point even before anyone identifies the brand.

What makes the piece so potent is that it is unapologetically maximal, yet still rooted in collector logic. The diamonds give it spectacle, but the scarcity gives it credibility, which is why a watch like this resonates far beyond the 1 percent fantasy tier. It tells readers exactly where luxury is headed: toward objects that are theatrical enough for a Met Gala camera flash, but rare enough to feel like they belong in a private collection rather than a display case.

The archival names carried just as much weight

If Johnson’s watch was pure bravado, the more nuanced luxury came from the archive. Rami Malek wore a rare platinum Cartier Crash from 1992, one of the kind of pieces that makes collectors lean in because the silhouette is unmistakable and the production history matters. Bad Bunny’s yellow-gold Cartier Cloche from 1996 offered a different kind of appeal, less explosive than the Billionaire III, but deeply desirable because of its shape, its era, and the way it reads as insider taste rather than loud flexing.

That same collector instinct showed up in Tyriq Withers’ and Finn Wolfhard’s Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso cocktail watches, which translate beautifully from red carpet to real life because the Reverso has a built-in language of elegance. Russell Wilson’s Jacob & Co. Astronomia pushed back toward spectacle, while Maluma’s Bulgari Octo Finissimo brought in the clean, ultra-thin modernist line that so many buyers now associate with contemporary quiet luxury. Skepta’s Audemars Piguet Royal Oak “Jumbo” Extra-Thin, set with 1,528 brilliant-cut yellow sapphires totaling more than 10 carats, sat right at the intersection of design cult and gemstone drama.

Jay-Z and the high end of collector culture

Jay-Z’s Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime was the other watch that dominated conversation, because its value was reported at about $6 million in some coverage and about $2.2 million in others. That gap is almost beside the point. The real story is that the Grandmaster Chime remains one of the clearest symbols of haute horology: complicated, rare, and instantly legible to anyone who understands what it means to wear a Patek that functions as a conversation-ending object.

Around it, the carpet also pulled in vintage Omega and Glashütte Original pieces, plus Russell Westbrook’s Rolex Daytona Rainbow in some coverage, showing that the most interesting watch culture is no longer split between old-money restraint and new-money flash. It now embraces both. That is what made the Met Gala so compelling this year: not just the price tags, but the way each wrist told a different story about taste, memory, and what luxury looks like when it is worn in public.

What these watches reveal about luxury taste right now

The clearest takeaway is that the market for status has become more literate. A watch no longer has to be the biggest object in the room to matter; it has to be the one with the best story, the most recognizable shape, or the sharpest sense of rarity. Cartier’s oddball forms, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s rectangular classics, Patek’s complications, and Jacob & Co.’s jeweled excess all work for the same reason: they reward knowledge.

For anyone thinking in gift terms, that is the useful lesson. The most aspirational watches at the Met were not simply expensive, they were specific. Some were archival, some were hyper-limited, and some were pure theater, but each one turned a celebrity wrist into a clue about where luxury is going next: toward pieces that look spectacular in a photograph, and even better to the person who knows exactly what they are looking at.