The panther has a new generation of keepers. Cartier has turned its long-running watchmaking competition for students into a two-discipline award, and for the first time, young jewelers are invited in. The Maison introduced it on Instagram as the Cartier Prize for Talents of Tomorrow: one theme, Cartier’s Wild Fauna, and two distinct awards, one for watchmaking and one for jewelry.
At a glance
- The prize: Formerly the Cartier Watchmaking Prize for Talents of Tomorrow, founded in 1995, now renamed and expanded to include jewelry.
- Theme: Cartier’s Wild Fauna.
- The briefs: Watchmakers reinterpret the in-house 1847 MC automatic movement; jewelers design a brooch that captures an animal’s presence.
- Applications: Open October 1 and close November 30, 2026.
- Format: Eight finalists per discipline, three months and up to 80 hours of work, three winners each.
- Winners announced: Spring 2027.
What is the Cartier Talents of Tomorrow Prize?
For three decades, the prize belonged to watchmaking students alone. Each year, apprentices and technicians were handed a movement and a theme and asked to reimagine both. This edition keeps that ritual and adds a second workbench. Three winners will be named in each discipline, judged on technical skill and creative daring.
The chosen finalists, eight in each category, receive three months and up to 80 hours to realize their projects, guided by an individual mentor from outside Cartier. Alongside the finished piece, each submits a logbook of sketches, photographs and milestones, so the jury sees the thinking as well as the object.
Who can apply?
Watchmaking students and apprentices may apply from Switzerland, France, Belgium and Germany, and, new this year, from Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Jewelry applicants must be studying in France, Italy or Switzerland and have completed at least two years of jewelry-focused training.
Who is on the jury?
The watchmaking jury includes independent master watchmaker Kari Voutilainen; Pascal Ravessoud of the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie; Nathalie Marielloni of the Musée International d’Horlogerie; collectors’ watch specialist Roy Davidoff; and Pascale Lepeu, director of the Cartier Collection.
The jewelers will present to Alexa Abitbol, director of Cartier’s high jewelry manufacture; François Curiel, chairman of Christie’s Europe; Mathieu Rousset-Perrier, heritage curator at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs; Laurent Laroche, chief executive of the Cristofol high jewelry atelier; and jewelry journalist Hervé Dewintre. Presenter and watchmaking expert Eléonor Picciotto will host the ceremonies.
A menagerie with a long memory
No theme could suit Cartier more. The panther first prowled across a Cartier wristwatch in 1914, as a pattern of spotted onyx and diamonds. Under Jeanne Toussaint, the Maison’s legendary creative director, the cat became fully three-dimensional; the 1948 panther brooch made for the Duchess of Windsor, poised atop a great cabochon emerald, remains one of the most famous jewels of the century. Tigers, birds and, in 1975, the articulated gold crocodile necklace commissioned by the actress María Félix followed.
The prize itself grew out of the Cartier Watchmaking Institute in Couvet, Switzerland, which launched it in 1995, two years after the institute was founded. The 1847 MC movement the watchmakers will work with is Cartier’s own manufacture automatic calibre, named for the year the house was founded in Paris.
A Maison built on panthers now asks its students to find the animal in a brooch and in a movement.
Why it matters
High jewelry depends on hands that take years to train: setters, polishers, lapidaries, engravers. By giving jewelry students the same stage its watchmakers have had since 1995, Cartier is making a public case that the transmission of craft matters as much as the pieces in its vitrines. For a young jeweler, eighty hours with a mentor and a jury of this calibre is a rare apprenticeship in itself.
Frequently asked questions
When is the deadline to apply?
Applications open October 1 and close November 30, 2026.
What do jewelry candidates have to make?
A brooch that translates the presence of an animal, in keeping with the Wild Fauna theme.
When will the winners be announced?
At award ceremonies in spring 2027, with three winners in watchmaking and three in jewelry.
Sources: WWD · Cartier on Instagram · Cartier Prize official site · Watchonista
