Chopard has been selected for the Global Elite Awards Top 100 in 2026, placing the Geneva Maison among the small international cohort of houses the programme regards as category-defining in the wider luxury jewellery and watchmaking landscape. The recognition confirms Chopard’s standing as one of the reference Maisons of Geneva, and one of the few international houses that holds high jewellery and watchmaking under one roof with equal seriousness.
A Geneva Maison, Three Generations In
Chopard was founded in the Swiss Jura in 1860 and bought by the Scheufele family in 1963. The family has run the house ever since and is now into its third generation. High jewellery and watchmaking are kept under one roof in Geneva rather than split into two separate businesses sharing a logo, with movements built in-house at the L.U.C manufacture in Fleurier since 1996. Happy Diamonds arrived in 1976 and remains in production. The Palme d’Or has been made by hand in the Geneva atelier every year since 1998. From 2018 every gram of gold used in the Maison has come from ethical sources, part of a wider sustainability commitment the house has treated as a long-term operating standard rather than a seasonal statement.
Craft Under One Roof
The Global Elite Awards panel noted the discipline of running jewellery and watchmaking as a single Maison. Very few houses in the international category today hold both disciplines at a credible standard, and fewer still do so under continuous family ownership. The combination is what gives Chopard its distinctive position in Geneva, and it is also what has allowed the Maison to develop a design vocabulary that reads as coherent across the Happy Sport, Alpine Eagle, L.U.C, and high jewellery collections.
What the Top 100 Recognition Signals
The Global Elite Awards Top 100 is the programme’s most selective annual editorial list, identifying the hundred most exceptional houses from the wider cohort across every category the awards cover. Selection is editorial, independent, and made by the same international panel that reviews candidates at category level, with an additional round of comparative review to isolate the houses considered category-defining rather than category-competent. For Chopard, the recognition places the Maison inside the small group of houses the panel regards as reference cases for the wider international luxury jewellery and watchmaking category.
For more information visit chopard.com and globaleliteawards.com.
