The next James Bond is still a mystery. As of 2026, Amazon MGM has confirmed that the casting search is underway, with Denis Villeneuve directing and Steven Knight writing the next film. Whoever eventually gets the keys to the Aston Martin will inherit one of cinema’s most recognizable wardrobes: tuxedo, dinner jacket, occasionally questionable tropical shirt... and a watch with a surprisingly difficult job to do.

Bond’s watches have always said something about the version of 007 wearing them. Sean Connery’s Rolex felt like equipment. Roger Moore embraced the electronic future. Pierce Brosnan helped turn the Omega Seamaster into part of the modern Bond uniform, and Daniel Craig brought the relationship closer to the details collectors actually obsess over.

That makes this strange period between Bonds a good time to look back. Before we find out what sits on the next 007’s wrist, these are the watches and eras that helped define the character.

Sean Connery’s Rolex Submariner Set the Original Bond Standard

The James Bond watch story starts with a watch that already had a job.

Sean Connery wore a Rolex Submariner ref. 6538, the famous “Big Crown” Submariner, beginning with Dr. No in 1962. It was a serious dive watch with a rotating bezel, highly legible dial and a design rooted in function. Nothing about it needed to scream luxury.

That suited Connery’s Bond remarkably well. He could wear a tuxedo, disappear underwater and get into a fight without changing watches between scenes. The Submariner made sense because Bond himself was presented as someone whose polished exterior covered a very practical profession.

The styling became even more memorable in Goldfinger, when the Submariner appeared on a striped nylon strap. The combination would eventually become so closely associated with 007 that striped “Bond” straps remain part of watch culture decades later. The exact history around some early Bond straps has been debated, so the important point is simpler: the Submariner established the visual language of the Bond tool watch.

That influence lasted. Even when Bond moved to radically different watches, the idea that his watch should look capable never completely disappeared.

Then Q Branch Realized a Watch Could Do More

By Thunderball in 1965, Bond’s wrist had acquired another responsibility. Connery wears a Breitling Top Time modified into a Geiger counter, supplied by Q Branch to help locate stolen nuclear weapons. It is generally regarded as Bond’s first true gadget watch, and that change matters more than the model itself.

The watch was no longer simply telling us who Bond was. It could participate in the plot.

That idea became a franchise tradition. Magnetic fields, detonators, lasers, tracking devices, messages… if Q could conceivably cram something into a wristwatch, sooner or later Bond was probably going to receive it with a dry warning about returning it in one piece.

The Top Time sits right at the point where the Bond watch changed from personal equipment into spy technology.

Roger Moore Put the Future on Bond’s Wrist

If Connery established the Bond tool watch, Roger Moore showed how quickly 007 could move with the times.

At the beginning of Live and Let Die in 1973, Moore checks the time on a Pulsar P2 LED digital watch. Press a button and glowing red digits appear from an otherwise dark display. Today it looks wonderfully retro. In 1973, it looked like tomorrow.

Hamilton itself recognizes the Pulsar’s appearance in Live and Let Die, and the watch belongs to a period when LED displays and electronic timekeeping felt genuinely futuristic.

Then came Seiko.

Across Moore’s later Bond films, Seiko watches became increasingly tied to the gadget-heavy personality of the era. A Seiko 0674 LC receives printed messages in The Spy Who Loved Me. The H357 Duo Display receives communications in For Your Eyes Only. In Octopussy, Bond gets a Seiko T001 TV Watch, an early wrist-mounted television that required additional hardware to work in the real world.

They can look bizarre beside the mechanical watches associated with Bond today. That is precisely why they matter.

Bond has always been presented as someone with access to technology slightly ahead of everybody else. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, digital watches represented that idea better than another traditional mechanical diver could have.

The Moore years captured something collectors sometimes forget when looking backward: a watch can become historically interesting because it was modern once.

GoldenEye Gave Bond a New Watch Identity

The biggest change after Rolex came in 1995.

Pierce Brosnan arrived as Bond in GoldenEye wearing the blue Omega Seamaster Professional 300M ref. 2541.80, powered by quartz. Later Brosnan films moved to the automatic ref. 2531.80, but the 2541.80 was the watch that started the relationship.

The choice has an interesting story behind it. Costume designer Lindy Hemming connected the Seamaster with Bond’s background as a naval officer and diver, drawing partly on her memories of military men wearing Omega watches. That reasoning helped the watch feel believable before the Bond-Omega connection became a franchise institution.

And institution is the right word. Omega confirms that Bond has worn its watches in every film since 1995.

For a generation of moviegoers, the blue Seamaster became the Bond watch. The wave dial, blue bezel and distinctive bracelet carried an association that earlier viewers had with the Submariner.

That is a rare accomplishment. Bond did not simply give the Seamaster screen time. The films helped give that particular era of Seamaster a cultural identity.

Daniel Craig Brought Bond Back Down to Earth

When Daniel Craig arrived in Casino Royale in 2006, the character changed. Less polish. More physicality. Fewer gadgets ready to rescue him from every bad decision.

His watches followed.

Craig wears an Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean ref. 2900.50.91 during the earlier portions of Casino Royale, later switching to the blue Seamaster Professional 300M ref. 2220.80.00.

The Planet Ocean in particular works beautifully for Craig’s first Bond because it looks like something chosen for the job. Big, highly legible and purpose-built, it helped reconnect the modern Omega partnership to the tool-watch attitude that made Connery’s Submariner so convincing decades earlier.

For collectors, Craig’s era also made Bond’s watch choices increasingly interesting as watches. Case size, materials, movements, straps and historical design references became part of the conversation around each film. The relationship between Omega and 007 had matured beyond placing a recognizable blue diver on screen.

And then Spectre made that explicit.

Spectre Made the Bond Watch a Collector’s Object

The Omega Seamaster 300 “Spectre” ref. 233.32.41.21.01.001 is one of the clearest examples of the Bond movie and watch-collector worlds colliding.

The 41mm Seamaster used a black 12-hour bezel, vintage-influenced dial details and a black-and-grey striped NATO-style strap that immediately recalled the Connery era. The commercial version was limited to 7,007 pieces. More unusually, this Bond-themed edition was actually the watch worn by Craig in the film rather than being a commemorative model released separately.

Q Branch even got involved again. The movie version contains an explosive device, bringing the gadget watch back after Craig’s more grounded early films.

There is a neat full-circle quality to it. Bond had moved from Rolex tool watch, to electronic experimentation, to Omega luxury icon — and here was a modern mechanical Seamaster borrowing visual cues from the earliest days while still blowing things up when necessary.

Very Bond.

No Time to Die Made the Watch More Personal

Craig’s final Bond watch pushed the relationship one step further.

The Omega Seamaster Diver 300M 007 Edition ref. 210.90.42.20.01.001 worn in No Time to Die uses Grade 2 titanium for the case and mesh bracelet, along with military-inspired markings and a deliberately aged-looking brown-and-black color palette.

More interestingly, Daniel Craig helped shape it. Omega has said his experience playing Bond and his interest in classic watches influenced details of the design.

That makes it an unusually appropriate final watch for his version of the character. Craig spent five films making Bond feel less like an untouchable fantasy and more like a person with history, scars and preferences. His last Seamaster feels similarly specific.

It is recognizably an Omega. Recognizably Bond. And recognizably his Bond.

The Next Bond Has a Tough Watch to Follow

We still do not know who the next James Bond will be, and there has been no official confirmation that Omega will remain his watch partner. What we do know is that whoever comes next will inherit more than six decades of wristwatch history.

That history also makes predicting the next Bond watch more interesting than simply asking which brand gets the placement. The best 007 watches told us something about their moment. Connery’s Submariner captured Bond as the capable operator. Moore’s electronics made him an early adopter. Brosnan’s Seamaster helped define polished 1990s Bond, while Craig’s watches returned the character to something tougher and increasingly personal.

So when the new Bond finally adjusts his cuff and gives us the first clear wrist shot, pay attention. We may be looking at a watch.

We may also be getting one of our first clues about who this new 007 is supposed to be.

Which Bond watch belongs in your collection: Connery’s Submariner, Moore’s wild Seikos, Brosnan’s blue Seamaster, or one of Craig’s Omegas? Let us know in the comments.