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Official Reveal · 6 May 2026 · Top Marques Monaco
The complete Heero Collection — every dial variant, the full movement, the world-record gong architecture — will be unveiled at the Monaco world première on 6 May 2026. Selected specifications are presented below for qualified enquirers.
The Timepiece
The inaugural Van Bergen 1795 wristwatch is named in honour of Heero Andries van Bergen, born in 1738, whose precision philosophy founded the dynasty. It was Heero Andries whose shipbuilding mastery established the mathematical rigour that would carry forward through six generations of bell founding — the same rigour that now governs every component of the Calibre VBA01. Named not for the last but for the first: the man who began it all.
Inaugural Collection
230 numbered pieces across five dial colours: Bourdon Blue, Forge Black, Clapper Silver, Viridian Green, and Vesper Violet. Each variant limited, each individually numbered. Titanium Grade-5 case, 41mm.
Monaco Special Edition
50 numbered pieces. Exclusive red dial, created solely for the Monaco world première. The same world-record sonnerie au passage in a case that carries the spirit of the Principality.
Monaco Special Edition
9 numbered pieces. The rarest expression of the Monaco Special Edition — white gold case, red dial exclusive to this première, and the same sonnerie au passage that defines Van Bergen 1795.
CTO & Master Watchmaker
Daniel van Ree is among the rarest of watchmakers, a master technician with both the classical training of the Vakschool voor Uurwerktechniek in Amsterdam and the creative vision to engineer the most striking complications in contemporary horology. As CTO of Van Bergen 1795, he is the architect of the world's first wristwatch to house a gong of this scale.
The challenge he faced was unlike anything in conventional watchmaking. In most striking watches, the movement is designed first and the acoustic mechanism fitted around it. Daniel inverted this entirely: the world-record gong came first, and the complete timekeeping calibre — the Calibre VBA01 — was conceived, engineered, and refined within the spatial constraints the gong imposed. The result is a 2.5 mm ultra-thin manufacture that is among the most technically demanding achievements in contemporary horology.
A larger gong sings longer, deeper, and truer: the difference between a chime that merely announces the hour and one that genuinely moves the wearer. The sonnerie au passage strikes the half-hour automatically and unprompted — not on demand, but as a habit, as a ritual, as the Van Bergen bells once marked the hours across Dutch squares and American cathedrals. The case itself is engineered as an acoustic chamber, amplifying the strike. The gong is visible in full through the sapphire caseback: 230 years of bell-founding mastery, distilled into 2.5 millimetres.
The Calibre VBA01
Complete movement specifications, finishing details, component count, and power reserve will be revealed at the Monaco world première on 6 May 2026. The selected specifications below are presented for qualified enquirers.
Selected Specifications
Calibre
VBA01
Van Bergen 1795 manufacture
Profile
2.5 mm
Ultra-thin
Winding
Automatic
Micro-rotor
Frequency
5 Hz
36,000 A/h
Complication
Sonnerie au passage
Half-hour, automatic
Gong
World Record
Largest in any wristwatch
Case Diameter
41 mm
Titanium Grade-5 / White Gold
Water Resistance
30 m
Acoustic chamber preserved
Power Reserve & Components
To be revealed at Monaco, 6 May 2026
Movement Partner
The Calibre VBA01 was developed in close cooperation with one of Switzerland's most distinguished independent movement ateliers — a specialist in grande complication movements, capable of designing, engineering, prototyping, decorating, and assembling entirely under one roof.
The partnership was founded on a shared conviction that a calibre is not merely a mechanism but a statement — developed from initial concept through to the first heartbeat of the completed movement, with the Van Bergen acoustic requirements at the centre of every decision.
