AP Just Made the Royal Oak's Most Famous Blue Into an Entire Watch

Audemars Piguet has taken the deep blue that made the Royal Oak famous and turned it into the whole watch. The new Royal Oak Selfwinding Flying Tourbillon, ref. 26730CD.OO.1225CD.01, is executed end to end in “Bleu Nuit, Nuage 50” ceramic — case, bezel, crown, integrated bracelet and the Grande Tapisserie dial. It is the first time AP has done the flying tourbillon this way.

That colour is not a marketing name. “Bleu Nuit, Nuage 50” is the shade AP used on the dial of the original 1972 Royal Oak Jumbo, and getting it to survive the ceramic sintering process consistently took the manufacture several years of development. Matching a blue across a case, a bezel and every bracelet link is the hard part, and it is the reason coloured ceramic on an integrated-bracelet watch is still rare at this level.

The specs are classic modern Royal Oak: 41mm across, 10.6mm thick, 50m water resistance, sapphire caseback in a titanium frame, applied white gold markers and hands. Inside is the in-house calibre 2950 — 270 components, 27 jewels, 21,600vph, 65 hours of reserve — with the flying tourbillon at six o'clock, bridge-free so the cage reads as if it is floating under the dial.

Here is the part collectors will care about: this is a permanent collection piece, not a limited edition. AP quotes it as Price on Request on its own site — Monochrome puts the expected figure around CHF 210,000, but treat that as an estimate until a boutique confirms it.

Status: live, in the permanent collection.