The small seconds counter on Panerai’s newest diver is drawn like a target. It sits at 3 o’clock on the dial of the Submersible Navy SEALs PAM01738, and a yellow hand sweeps around it. The yellow is no accident. Men’s Journal reported that it nods to the color of the Special Warfare operators’ insignia, and a Navy SEALs decal sits at 6 o’clock to make the link plain.
The watch was unveiled in June 2026. It has a 44mm brushed stainless steel case and a ceramic bezel insert, with a shaded anthracite dial. Water resistance is 500 meters. A screw-down case back carries a Navy SEALs logo inside a stars and stripes design.
Built to be read in the dark
Panerai spent its effort on legibility. The applied indexes are 20 percent wider than before and carry 45 percent more Super-LumiNova, according to Men’s Journal and HiConsumption. The hour markers and hour hand glow green. The minute hand and the dot at 12 o’clock on the bezel glow blue, so a diver can tell elapsed immersion time from the clock itself at a glance.
Inside is the P.980 automatic movement with a three-day power reserve and a stop-seconds function, which lets a diver set the watch to the exact second before going under. It resists magnetism up to about 1,000 Gauss. A black rubberized crown sits behind Panerai’s locking crown guard, which helps with grip when hands are wet.
Ten years in a lab
Before any unit goes on sale, Panerai runs representative examples through a punishing routine meant to mimic roughly a decade of wear. HiConsumption and Esquire list 19,000 bezel rotations, 10,000 cycles of the crown lever, 3.6 million winding turns and 8 million rotor rotations, plus impacts of up to 5,000g, thermal shocks, UV exposure and corrosion tests. Every finished watch is also pressure-tested to 25% beyond its rated depth. As Esquire put it, most owners will never dive anywhere near 500 metres. Part of the appeal is knowing someone else already has.
Price and how it differs from the hafnium model
The PAM01738 is the watch a customer can actually buy. Earlier in the year Panerai released the Afniotech Experience Edition, a 47mm hafnium-cased watch limited to 35 pieces, sold with a three-day special ops trip in Florida at a price north of $65K, according to HiConsumption. The steel version drops to 44mm and is not limited.
It ships with two interchangeable straps, an accordion black rubber one for diving and a military grey canvas one for daily wear. Panerai priced it at $12,400, or £10,400 in Britain. Military.com reported on July 29, 2026, that the watch had been released to boutiques worldwide.
Sources
- Discover Panerai's Submersible Navy SEALs Watch: Tough, Stylish, and $12,400 (Men's Journal via AOL)
- Panerai's Submersible Navy SEALs Diver is Gloriously Tactical Overkill (HiConsumption, by Ryan Calder)
- Panerai's New Navy SEALs Watch Has Been Tested For a Decade's Worth of Wear (Esquire UK)
- Two New Navy SEAL-Inspired Watches Hit the Market (Military.com, by Katherine Plummer)
