watchOS 26 doesn’t come with new watch faces, for now at least.
The only “new” watch face in watchOS 26 is an enhanced Photos watch face:
The popular Photos watch face is enhanced with numerals made of Liquid Glass, allowing users to see even more of their photo.
That’s it. Unless you’re a Series 10 user who is obsessive about the fine details, that’s the only benefit you’re getting from a watch face point of view. Series 10 users get to enjoy an always-on display with ticking seconds hand for many older watch faces. To make things even worse for non-Series 10 users, Apple got rid of five watch faces, but I honestly won’t miss them.
In the past, Apple did debut new watch faces in June for the beta releases, but they saved the bulk of their newer watch faces for the public watchOS release in September. Some of those watch faces were exclusive to a newly designed Apple Watch, and some were back ported to older watches. You can see the (rough) history of what watch faces were revealed at what time frame below:
watchOS 2 beta - Photo Albums, Timelapse
watchOS 3 beta - Minnie Mouse, Activity and Numerals
watchOS 4 beta - Siri, Toy Story, Kaleidoscope
watchOS 4 public release - Explorer (debuted with the Series 3)
watchOS 5 beta - Pride
watchOS 5 public release - Infograph, Infograph Modular, Liquid Metal, Vapor, Fire and Water (all debuted with the Series 4 and its bigger display)
watchOS 6 beta - Numerals Mono, Numerals Duo, Modular Compact, Gradient, Solar Dial, California
watchOS 6 public release - no new watch faces, but they debuted the Always-On Display for the Series 5.
watchOS 7 beta - Chronograph Pro
watchOS 7 public release - GMT, Count Up, Typograph, Memoji, Stripes, Artist
watchOS 8 beta - Portraits
watchOS 8 public release - Modular Duo, Contour, World Timer
watchOS 9 beta - Lunar, Playtime, Metropolitan, Astronomy
watchOS 9 public release - no additional watch faces, but the Apple Watch Ultra is debuted with the exclusive Wayfinder watch face
watchOS 10 beta - Palette, Snoopy
watchOS 10 public release - Solar Analog (debuted with the Series 9)
watchOS 11 beta - Photos (a redesign more than an actual new watch face)
watchOS 11 - Flux, Reflections (both debuted with the Series 10), and Unity Rhythm debuted months later with a software update.
watchOS 26 beta - Liquid Glass on the Photos watch face.
watchOS 26 public release - ???
This isn’t an exhaustive list of every single watch face that has debuted, but I think I got most of them. There is no fixed pattern here either, but a minimum of two new watch faces isn’t a lot to ask for.
I’m thinking since the Series 11 is a minimal upgrade over the Series 10, we will get a few new watch faces to make the Series 11 more relevant. I’m fully expecting Apple to release at least two different Liquid Glass watch faces in the Fall - an analog variant that resembles a modern version of the Color watch face, and some sort of playful, bubbly digital face.
An exclusive new Ultra watch face is also a given.