The shortlist for the 2018 GPHG awards has been announced – we pick our would-be winners and see what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from this year’s selection
By Chris Hall and James Buttery

The GPHG (Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Geneve) takes place every October in November, and is widely viewed as the most prestigious set of awards the industry has to offer. Conferred by a panel of expert judges drawn from around the world, the awards look to honour the best examples of watchmaking across a number of different categories. Every year a longlist of entrants is published during the summer, and whittled down to a shortlist of six watches per category by the judging panel. 
The system is not without its flaws; as we wrote earlier this year when the longlist was announced, it suffers from the fact that brands must put their own watches forward to be considered, so there’s no Patek Philippe or Rolex, and the categories themselves can be confusing. But here is the shortlist, and since we at QP love a chance to stick our necks out and make a few bold predictions, we have been through it and selected the watches we think deserve to win each award. Come the 31st of October, we’ll know how right or wrong we’ve been.  One final note before we start: although the awards take place every year, they are open to watches from a wider time frame. The wording states that “only watches commercialised after March 2017 and at the latest by ...