Hankyu Umeda gathers 26 watch brands for a three-week expo on its rebuilt luxury floor
Hankyu Umeda Main Store is running 26 watch brands -- from Cartier and Vacheron Constantin to Grand Seiko -- through its renovated "HANKYU LUXURY" floor and a run of pop-ups from Tudor, Piaget, Bvlgari and Vacheron Constantin until November 24, a concrete read on how hard one of Osaka's biggest department stores is fighting for the luxury-watch buyer.
Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores, Inc. (株式会社阪急阪神百貨店) is running "PREMIUM WATCH EXPO 2026" (プレミアム ウォッチ エキスポ 2026) at Hankyu Umeda Main Store (阪急うめだ本店) in Osaka from November 4 to 24, bringing together 26 watch brands across the store's fifth- and sixth-floor "HANKYU LUXURY" watch and jewellery galleries, which the company says reopened renovated earlier this spring, according to a November 4 announcement. The event also spills into the 13th-floor Diamond Hall, two rotating first- and fifth-floor event spaces called Kotokoto Stage, and -- for Bell & Ross alone -- the first floor of the separate Hankyu Men's Osaka store.
The brand list runs from established maisons -- Cartier, Bvlgari, Van Cleef & Arpels, Vacheron Constantin, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Piaget, Harry Winston -- to watch specialists including IWC, Zenith, Omega, Breitling, Hublot, Panerai, Tudor, Tag Heuer, Longines, Breguet, Chopard, Blancpain, Baume & Mercier, Gerald Charles, Singer Reimagined and Tissot, alongside Japanese names Grand Seiko and Credor. Hankyu calls it the "largest watch festival in western Japan" -- a claim the release makes without citing attendance or exhibitor figures from a comparable event, so floortok treats it as the store's own promotion rather than a verified fact.
Five 2026 models get named prices in the release: Cartier's Roadster in its medium size at ¥3,022,800, Blancpain's Ladybird Lady B at ¥2,420,000, Vacheron Constantin's Overseas Automatic at ¥9,152,000, Zenith's Chronomaster Sport at ¥1,458,600 and Omega's Seamaster Diver 300M at ¥1,287,000.
A run of single-brand pop-ups moves through the ground- and fifth-floor Kotokoto Stage spaces across the three weeks: Tudor's sumo-themed "Hankyu Umeda Basho" from November 4 to 10 (already reported by floortok), Piaget's "Art of Colour" showcase and a hands-on dial-cutting workshop over the same week, Bvlgari from November 11 to 17, and Vacheron Constantin's "EXPLORE" pop-up closing out the run from November 18 to 24. The 13th-floor Diamond Hall also hosts four ticketed, lottery-reserved talk shows on November 14 and 15, pairing watch editors and stylists to discuss pieces from IWC and Zenith.
Running 26 brands and four single-brand pop-ups through one renovated floor for three weeks is less a single event than a sustained occupation of the store's luxury real estate -- a Presentation and Promotion bet that uses Hankyu Umeda's own newly rebuilt watch galleries as the draw, rather than any one brand's novelty. For the maisons, showing a flagship new model such as Vacheron Constantin's ¥9.15 million Overseas Automatic alongside Grand Seiko's domestic offer puts Japanese and Swiss watchmaking side by side in the same cases, on the same floor, for shoppers deciding where that budget goes this winter.