Watch Paparazzi

Royal Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani spotted wearing Richard Mille

During the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, Prince Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani — president of the Qatar Olympic Committee and the driving force behind Qatar's sporting ambitions — was photographed courtside wearing a Richard Mille RM 27-02 Tourbillon Rafael Nadal. The setting, one of the most watched sporting events in history hosted on Qatari soil, placed the ultra-rare timepiece in front of a global audience.

The Richard Mille RM 27-02 represents a genuine engineering milestone. It is the first watch ever to feature what Richard Mille calls a unibody construction: the caseband and baseplate are not assembled as separate components but are instead fused — or more precisely, machined — into a single continuous skeletal structure. This radical approach eliminates the traditional interface between case and movement, reducing weight and increasing structural rigidity simultaneously. The manual-winding tourbillon movement is suspended within this architecture using a cable tensioning system derived directly from Nadal's racket strings, capable of withstanding shocks exceeding 10,000 Gs. The case is rendered in TPT Carbon and Quartz TPT, proprietary composite materials developed by Richard Mille that offer exceptional strength-to-weight ratios.

The RM 27-02 is the third chapter in a long-running collaboration between Richard Mille and Rafael Nadal, following the RM 027 and RM 27-01. Each successive model has pushed the engineering brief further — Nadal famously wears his during Grand Slam matches, subjecting the movement to the kind of mechanical violence that would destroy a conventional tourbillon. The RM 27-02 edition was limited to just 50 pieces, making it one of the most restricted references in the entire Nadal series.

Prince Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani is no casual watch wearer. As a member of the Qatari royal family with deep institutional involvement in global sport, his choice of the RM 27-02 at a World Cup match speaks to a collector sensibility that gravitates toward watches with genuine performance credentials rather than purely decorative value.

On the secondary market, the Richard Mille RM 27-02 Tourbillon Rafael Nadal commands significant premiums over its already substantial retail price. With only 50 examples in existence and strong demand from both Nadal fans and serious Richard Mille collectors, auction results and grey-market listings have consistently pushed values well above $1 million USD, affirming its status as one of the most coveted modern references in high-horology collecting.