TAG Heuer is kicking off the 2026 Formula 1 season with a connected watch instead of a mechanical chronograph, and it might be the smartest thing the brand has done with the Connected line yet.
The TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E5 45mm x Formula 1 is a special edition built around a dedicated F1 digital experience that goes properly deep. We’re not talking about a branded dial and a red pushers here. This is a full F1 app on your wrist, with real-time Grand Prix schedules, post-race results, and live driver and team standings pulled directly from race data.
The Face That Changes Every Race Weekend
The hero watch face is called Race Track, and it automatically updates for each of the 24 Grand Prix weekends. You get the country flag, race name, and actual circuit silhouette on the dial, with a moving dot that traces the track outline as the seconds pass. It’s a small thing but it gives the face a sense of movement that most digital watch faces completely lack.
Smart widgets serve up key updates without opening the app, and notifications arrive styled like pit radio comms, complete with branded sounds and icons. If you’re the kind of person who checks their phone 40 times during qualifying, this removes at least half of those.
Curated news for men,
delivered to your inbox.
Join the DMARGE newsletter — Be the first to receive the latest news and exclusive stories on style, travel, luxury, cars, and watches. Straight to your inbox.
Black DLC Titanium Waith Some Thought Behind It
The case is 45mm of brushed and sandblasted Grade 2 titanium with a black DLC coating, running a 1.39-inch AMOLED display at 454×454 resolution. The curved bezel is black polished ceramic with the phases of a Grand Prix weekend engraved around the edge, which is a better use of bezel real estate than most connected watches manage.
The pushers get black DLC with red lacquer accents, and the caseback carries a heart rate sensor alongside the red F1 logo. It sounds like a small detail but it’s the difference between a partnership that’s integrated into the watch and one that’s just stamped on the dial.
Two straps come in the box. The first is black leather over a rubber base with a carbon pattern and red stitching. The second is a stretch textile with a self-fastening closure, built for training and sleep tracking. Good call including both, because nobody wants to run in a leather strap and nobody wants to wear stretch textile to dinner.
What’s Running Under the Hood
TAG Heuer is using the Calibre E5 platform with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 5100+ chipset on TAG Heuer OS. Health and fitness tracking covers the full spread: heart rate, SpO2, breathing rate, sleep, plus the usual accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, and barometer. GPS is dual-band across GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS, and Galileo, which matters if you actually train with it and want your runs tracked properly rather than approximated.
Battery life sits at two days in normal use, three in low power mode. Fast charging gets you a full day from roughly 30 minutes on the charger, which is the kind of real-world detail that matters more than any spec sheet number.
Is It Worth $3,850?
At $3,850 AUD, the price is consistent with the rest of the Connected line. What separates this from a standard model with a new strap is the depth of the F1 integration. The dedicated app, the race-by-race face updates, the pit radio notifications. TAG Heuer held the Official Timekeeper role for F1 from 1992 to 2003 before picking it back up, and they launched the first luxury connected watch in 2015, so this sits at the intersection of two things the brand actually has form in.
It lands in March 2026, with 48 hours of early access on the TAG Heuer website from March 3. The packaging is fully motorsport themed with soft-touch black surfaces and a checkered flag design, and the unboxing is staged in a way that suggests someone at TAG Heuer actually thought about the experience beyond the watch itself.
TAG Heuer is kicking off the 2026 Formula 1 season with a connected watch instead of a mechanical chronograph, and it might be the smartest thing the brand has done with the Connected line yet.
The TAG Heuer Connected Calibre E5 45mm x Formula 1 is a special edition built around a dedicated F1 digital experience that goes properly deep. We’re not talking about a branded dial and a red pushers here. This is a full F1 app on your wrist, with real-time Grand Prix schedules, post-race results, and live driver and team standings pulled directly from race data.
The Face That Changes Every Race Weekend
The hero watch face is called Race Track, and it automatically updates for each of the 24 Grand Prix weekends. You get the country flag, race name, and actual circuit silhouette on the dial, with a moving dot that traces the track outline as the seconds pass. It’s a small thing but it gives the face a sense of movement that most digital watch faces completely lack.
Smart widgets serve up key updates without opening the app, and notifications arrive styled like pit radio comms, complete with branded sounds and icons. If you’re the kind of person who checks their phone 40 times during qualifying, this removes at least half of those.
Black DLC Titanium With Some Thought Behind It
The case is 45mm of brushed and sandblasted Grade 2 titanium with a black DLC coating, running a 1.39-inch AMOLED display at 454×454 resolution. The curved bezel is black polished ceramic with the phases of a Grand Prix weekend engraved around the edge, which is a better use of bezel real estate than most connected watches manage.
The pushers get black DLC with red lacquer accents, and the caseback carries a heart rate sensor alongside the red F1 logo. It sounds like a small detail but it’s the difference between a partnership that’s integrated into the watch and one that’s just stamped on the dial.
Two straps come in the box. The first is black leather over a rubber base with a carbon pattern and red stitching. The second is a stretch textile with a self-fastening closure, built for training and sleep tracking. Good call including both, because nobody wants to run in a leather strap and nobody wants to wear stretch textile to dinner.
What’s Running Under the Hood
TAG Heuer is using the Calibre E5 platform with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 5100+ chipset on TAG Heuer OS. Health and fitness tracking covers the full spread: heart rate, SpO2, breathing rate, sleep, plus the usual accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, and barometer. GPS is dual-band across GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS, and Galileo, which matters if you actually train with it and want your runs tracked properly rather than approximated.
Battery life sits at two days in normal use, three in low power mode. Fast charging gets you a full day from roughly 30 minutes on the charger, which is the kind of real-world detail that matters more than any spec sheet number.
Is It Worth $3,850?
At $3,850 AUD, the price is consistent with the rest of the Connected line. What separates this from a standard model with a new strap is the depth of the F1 integration. The dedicated app, the race-by-race face updates, the pit radio notifications. TAG Heuer held the Official Timekeeper role for F1 from 1992 to 2003 before picking it back up, and they launched the first luxury connected watch in 2015, so this sits at the intersection of two things the brand actually has form in.
It lands in March 2026, with 48 hours of early access on the TAG Heuer website from March 3. The packaging is fully motorsport-themed, with soft-touch black surfaces and a checkered-flag design, and the unboxing is staged in a way that suggests someone at TAG Heuer actually thought about the experience beyond the watch itself.
Want to get your hands on it? Enquire below.
Specifications
| Reference | SBT8A85.EB0417 |
| Movement | Calibre E5, Qualcomm Snapdragon 5100+ |
| Battery Life | 2 days (full) / 3 days (low power) |
| Crystal | Flat sapphire |
| Case | 45mm, black DLC Grade 2 titanium |
| GPS | Dual band (L1+L5): GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, QZSS, Galileo |
| Water Resistance | 50 metres |
| Straps | Black leather/carbon + stretch textile |
| Price | $3,850 AUD |
