Teddy Baldassarre
The Best Skeleton Watches For 2026
The skeleton watch or skeletonized watch is a style of timepiece that is almost exclusively the domain of watches with mechanical movements. The process of skeletonizing a watch is simple - in theory. By opening up the dial and caseback and stripping out some large areas of movement parts, the maker of a skeleton watch reveals the "bones" beneath the surface. In practical terms, skeletonizing a watch can be done minimally or it can be done to an extreme level, and in both case the result can often be polarizing. Whether you love or hate the style, skeleton watches are nearly always a reliable conversation starter among enthusiasts of mechanical wristwatches. To keep those conversations going, we've compiled this list of some of the best skeleton watches on the market today. Before diving into the list, let's clear up some of the jargon you can expect to come across. First off, there are two other terms that tend to be lumped in with the subject of skeleton watches, namely “open heart” and "openworked." "Open heart" tends to describe a type of dial aperture that reveals usually just the balance wheel beating away but very little else. ”Openworked” is a term that is commonly used as an alternative to "skeletonized" since being popularized by Audemars Piguet (more on that below). Essentially, openworked and skeletonized are interchangeable in describing the same aesthetic. So, on this list there will be skeleton(ized) and openworked watches but not open-heart w...
