The Short Answer
Gallet is back. Breitling bought the dormant 200-year-old Swiss brand in 2025 and relaunched it in 2026, timed to Gallet's actual bicentennial: the company was founded in 1826 by Julien Gallet in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Four collections launched at once: the Flying Officer, the Multichron Pilot, the Multichron Sport, and the Classics, priced from EUR 2,900 to EUR 6,700.
This is not a vanity revival of a forgotten name. Gallet stopwatches reportedly timed the Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903, and the brand's 1939 Flying Officer was the watch President Harry Truman wore after taking office in 1945. Breitling is positioning the new Gallet as its most affordable tier, aimed straight at Tudor and Longines.
The rotating 12-hour bezel with city names on the new Flying Officer is a direct callback to the 1939 original, built for pilots tracking more than one time zone.
The watch photos in this article were generated with AI image tools, conditioned on real reference photography of the new Gallet collections so the case shapes and dial layouts are accurate to the real watches.
A Brand That Actually Did Something First
Gallet's history is real, not marketing filler. Two Gallet pocket stopwatches were used to time the Wright brothers' historic flights at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903, and one sits in the National Air and Space Museum today. That is not a claim Breitling invented for the relaunch. It predates Breitling's involvement by well over a century.
In 1939, Gallet introduced the Flying Officer, described at the time as the first chronograph wristwatch with a multiple time zone calculator built in. Truman received one and wore it after becoming president in 1945. The late 1930s and 1940s also produced the MultiChron family, including the 1938 MultiChron Clamshell, one of the earliest chronographs built with real water protection using four screws integrated into the lugs.
The Long Dormancy
The Gallet family sold the company in 1994, and the brand largely disappeared from the market through the following decades, a familiar story for a company that struggled through the quartz crisis of the 1970s without finding a way back. Breitling acquired the name in 2025 and spent roughly a year rebuilding a full 2026 collection around it.
The Four New Collections
Breitling launched all four collections simultaneously rather than staggering them, a clear signal it wants Gallet to read as a complete relaunch, not a single nostalgia piece.
The Multichron Pilot's three-subdial layout and telemeter scale trace back to the original 1969 Multichron, one of the references collectors already knew before the relaunch.
Flying Officer: The Heritage Flagship
The 40mm Flying Officer comes in two versions. The chronograph runs EUR 4,400 on strap or EUR 4,600 on bracelet, built on a Sellita SW510 base. A simpler automatic time-only version, on the Sellita SW200, runs EUR 2,900 on strap or EUR 3,100 on bracelet. Both keep the rotating 12-hour bezel with world city names that made the original a working pilot's tool.
Multichron Pilot and Multichron Sport
The 42mm Multichron Pilot and 41mm Multichron Sport both list at EUR 4,400 on strap or EUR 4,600 on bracelet. The Pilot keeps a three-register chronograph layout with a telemeter scale and offers reverse panda dial options in black-on-white or blue-on-black. The Sport drops the rotating bezel for a cleaner, more contemporary case with polished bevels, aimed at buyers who want the chronograph without the aviation styling cues.
Classics: The Vaucher-Adjacent Flagship
At EUR 6,700, the 38mm Classics collection sits above the rest of the lineup and runs a hand-wound Breitling caliber B09 movement across three references, each styled as a tribute to a specific vintage Gallet model. This is the tier built for buyers who want the archive connection made explicit rather than reinterpreted.
The Multichron Sport strips the rotating bezel the Flying Officer and Multichron Pilot both keep, betting that some buyers want the chronograph without the vintage-aviation signaling.
Where Gallet Sits Against Tudor and Longines
Every reference in the new lineup lands between roughly EUR 2,900 and EUR 6,700, positioning Gallet as Breitling's value tier, well under the brand's own Navitimer and Chronomat pricing. That puts it in direct competition with Tudor's Black Bay range and Longines' Spirit and Heritage lines, both of which already sell heritage-styled chronographs with in-house or co-developed movements in a similar price band.
The Honest Trade-Off
Reviving a dormant brand is a balancing act, and Gallet has not fully picked a lane yet. The Flying Officer and Multichron Pilot lean hard on 1930s and 1960s archive styling, while the Multichron Sport reads closer to a generic modern sports chronograph with a vintage name attached. Buyers drawn in by the Wright brothers and Truman history should look closely at which reference actually earns that story and which one is closer to a Sellita movement in a nicely finished case.
What To Watch Going Forward
Gallet's archive includes material Breitling has not touched yet in this first wave: dive watches, regulator dials, and decimal chronographs built for scientific and industrial timing. If the brand mines that material in future releases rather than repeating pilot-chronograph themes across every collection, it will have more room to differentiate from Tudor and Longines than this launch lineup currently shows.
The Classics collection is the only tier of the relaunch built on a Breitling in-house caliber rather than a Sellita base, and it prices accordingly at EUR 6,700.
FAQ
Is Gallet owned by Breitling?
Yes. Breitling acquired the dormant Gallet brand in 2025 and relaunched it in 2026 to mark Gallet's 200th anniversary, with four new collections built around the archive.
What is Gallet's connection to the Wright brothers?
Two Gallet pocket stopwatches were used to time the Wright brothers' first powered flights on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk. One is held in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum.
How much do the new Gallet watches cost?
Pricing runs from EUR 2,900 for the automatic Flying Officer up to EUR 6,700 for the Classics collection, with the Flying Officer chronograph and both Multichron models at EUR 4,400 to EUR 4,600.
What movement do the new Gallet watches use?
The Flying Officer, Multichron Pilot, and Multichron Sport all use Sellita base movements (SW510 for chronographs, SW200 for time-only). The Classics collection is the exception, running Breitling's in-house hand-wound caliber B09.
Is Gallet a good alternative to Tudor or Longines?
It competes in the same roughly EUR 3,000 to 7,000 band with a genuinely deep archive to draw on, but it is a brand-new relaunch with no resale track record yet, unlike Tudor's Black Bay or Longines' Spirit and Heritage lines.
Related Reading
- The Breitling Navitimer Buying Guide: Every Modern Reference, the Cosmonaute Artemis II Meteorite Dial, and What Pre-Owned Actually Costs in 2026
- Breitling Depreciates Hard. That Is Exactly Why You Should Buy One.
- The Breitling Superocean Is the Most Overlooked Value Diver in the Swiss Catalog
- The Complete Christopher Ward Brand and Model Guide: The Twelve, C60 Trident, C63 Sealander, and Bel Canto