Planet Swatch: The Swatch Museum in Biel/Bienne

Location

Biel/Bienne, Switzerland

Address

Cité du Temps, Nicolas G. Hayek Strasse 2, 2502 Biel/Bienne

Type

Brand museum

Official website ↗

History of the museum

Planet Swatch is listed by the Swatch Group among its landmarks as the Swatch Museum. It is housed in the Cité du Temps in Biel/Bienne, an exhibition center dedicated to time that was designed entirely by the Japanese architect and Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban. The building opened as the new home of the OMEGA Museum in 2019 and contains two museums on two floors: the OMEGA Museum below and Planet Swatch on the second floor.

The location ties the museum to the company's history. Biel/Bienne has been a watchmaking center since the 19th century, and the Swatch Group has its worldwide headquarters in the city. The museum's address carries the name of Nicolas G. Hayek, who took over a majority shareholding in the company in 1985, became chairman and CEO in 1986 and later renamed it the Swatch Group.

What you can see

According to the Swatch Group and the Cité du Temps, Planet Swatch presents several thousand of the most intriguing Swatch watches, covering the earliest models through to the most recent ones. The exhibition explains how taste evolved, how legends were created and how icons were born, and it presents the brand's past, present and future through designs, experiences and artworks. The Swatch Group calls it "so much more than a museum". The spaces of the Cité du Temps are equipped with interactive technologies.

The story starts with the first collection of twelve Swatch models, introduced on 1 March 1983 in Zurich at around CHF 50 each and marketed as casual, affordable accessories. Later chapters include mechanical developments such as Sistem51, presented at Baselworld 2013 as a movement of 51 components with automatic winding, a 90-hour power reserve and fully automated assembly. The official sources do not name individual pieces on display, so specific models should be confirmed with the museum.

Why it matters for watch collectors and owners

Swatch has released an enormous number of designs since 1983, which makes the brand hard to survey from catalogs alone. Seeing several thousand watches arranged across the brand's history helps collectors place a model in its period and understand how design trends and special editions developed. The museum also documents a key episode in Swiss watch history: an affordable, mass-produced Swiss watch that became the foundation of the Swatch Group, which today also owns brands such as Omega and Longines. Planet Swatch is an exhibition, not an appraisal service; questions about a specific watch should go through official Swatch channels.

Visiting

Planet Swatch is on the second floor of the Cité du Temps, Nicolas G. Hayek Strasse 2, 2502 Biel/Bienne. The OMEGA Museum on the floor below can be visited on the same day.

Opening hours and admission (as of 2026, according to the official Cité du Temps website): Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00; closed on Mondays and public holidays. Admission is free for adults, children under 12, adolescents under 18, students and AHV/AI recipients. Group visits must be requested by email at least 72 hours in advance, subject to availability, and groups or school classes with more than 10 participants should contact the museum.

Getting there: from Biel/Bienne railway station, take bus line 2, 3, 4 or 72 to the "OMEGA" stop. Parking around the museum is limited to blue-zone spaces with a one-hour maximum and a parking disc, so public transport is the practical choice. Biel/Bienne station is a junction on the Swiss east-west main line and the Basel-Bern line.

Related brands

• Swatch

Opening hours, prices and exhibitions change. Please check the official website before your visit.

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