BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
Some of our readers may not recognise the name Marco Lang from the watch industry, and that’s okay. Lang operates at the level of independent watchmakers such as MB&F, Laurent Ferrier and more. You might recognise his surname as one half of the Dresden-based watchmaker Lang & Heyne. Lang formed Lang & Heyne with Mirko Heyne in 2001 and demonstrated their first piece under that name at Baselworld in 2002. While Heyne left the picture in that same year, Lang stayed with the company until 2019, having created eight watch models and nine calibres along the way. These days, Lang works for himself under the name Marco Lang, and for 2026, he’s unveiled his most complicated piece yet: the “Seven Spheres”.
Upon seeing this watch for the first time, I would urge you to do as I did: stop and take a moment to drink it all in. While we see a lot of new and exciting watches all the time, we don’t often see ones quite like this. Indeed, it took me a little while to shake off the stupor I was in and start to figure out just what I’m looking at.
The Seven Spheres piece appears, in some ways, like Vianney Halter’s Deep Space Tourbillon watch, with the extremely complex escapement residing at the watch’s centre. The time is displayed around it, by two hands that appear to float above the watch, and there is a domed crystal over the top. Whereas the Deep Space watches are obviously inspired by sci-fi, the Seven Spheres features a rather classical case shape with straight sides that have been polished and engraved. The 950 platinum case, measuring 42mm x 18mm, including the crystal’s dome, is almost sensible. Almost.
The Seven Spheres’ movement is the obvious focal point here. The calibre ML-02/7sp is hand-wound with a 55-hour power reserve and a 3Hz beat rate. It powers two blued hands pointing towards a solid silver ring with two “Breguet thread” guilloché. The main focus, though, is that crazy looking escapement with all the silvery rings around it.
According to Marco Lang’s website, the inspiration for the Seven Spheres comes from Contact (1997), a film based on Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel of the same name. Fascinated by the wormhole machine from the story, which was built according to the instructions from an alien race with three concentric rings, Lang built something similar to this in the centre of his watch. He used the ancient theory of the geocentric worldview, whereby the Earth is stationary at the centre of the universe and seven heavenly bodies (the Moon, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) orbited it. The later theories of heliocentrism, where the Sun is actually at the centre of the universe with the planets orbiting around it, also used seven rings. Today, we know that the Sun isn’t at the centre of the universe, although we do orbit around it while we ourselves are in a much larger moving galaxy.
Marco Lang’s Seven Spheres watch uses the concept of seven rings orbiting the escapement at the centre and brings it to life using seven rings made from titanium, which are each offset by 30 degrees. To balance said rings and keep the watch stable and functional, Lang uses platinum weights, as the titanium was too light. Four parallel barrels provide the driving force needed for the watch to keep working, as you can imagine, something like this is much more power hungry than a traditional watch movement. There’s a fantastic animation of all this happening on Lang’s website.
One thing Marco Lang doesn’t mention on his website is anything to do with the watch’s accuracy. There are no claims that this new system is a groundbreaking leap for mechanical-based accuracy, rather, it’s here as a dream that became reality. Lang’s website has quite a bit of detail written by the man himself, where he talks about his passion and his development, such as having had to learn how to make the perfect ball bearings for the Seven Spheres. To go from a dream in 2022 to a finished watch in early 2026 is remarkable, especially when it’s something like the Seven Spheres. I do not doubt that there will be 18 buyers for this limited edition piece. If you’re one of them, you should know that the retail price is €250,000.
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