Forty Years In The Making
Christie’s Hong Kong marks four decades of defining Asian taste with a landmark Luxury Week spanning fine wine, magnificent jewels, coveted timepieces and the most collectible handbags in the world.
There are auction weeks, and then there are moments that crystallise the culture of an era. Christie’s Hong Kong Luxury Week, running from 22 to 28 May 2026, belongs firmly in the second category. This year’s edition carries particular resonance: it marks forty years since Christie’s held its first auction in Hong Kong, a January 1986 sale of Chinese paintings and jadeite jewellery that closed with a total turnover exceeding HK$14 million and announced, with quiet confidence, a new chapter in the global art and luxury market. What began as a single auction catalogue has grown into one of the most anticipated luxury events on the Asian calendar – and the spring 2026 edition makes that journey impossible to ignore.
The week opens on 22 May with Iconic Wines from Joseph Lau Part V, the final instalment in the sale of a cellar that has become synonymous with blue-chip Burgundy and Bordeaux collecting. The centrepiece is 33 lots of Henri Jayer Vosne-Romanée Cros-Parantoux spanning the 1991 to 2001 vintages, a sequence that represents some of the most coveted bottles in the world of fine wine. Alongside them, Romanée-Conti and Montrachet from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, together with rare whites from Domaine d’Auvenay, complete a line-up that reads less like an auction catalogue and more like a collector’s private reverie. Lau, the Hong Kong property tycoon and legendary collector whose interests span Western art, Chinese antiquities, diamonds and wine, has become one of the defining presences in Christie’s Asian history. That this chapter closes in Hong Kong’s 40th anniversary year feels both fitting and elegiac.
Three days later, the focus turns to fashion. The Handbags and Accessories sale on 25 May presents more than 200 lots drawn from the ateliers of Hermès, Chanel and Louis Vuitton, with limited edition Birkins and Kellys commanding the upper echelons of the estimate range. Among the highlights is a rare matte vert d’eau alligator Hermès piece with palladium hardware – the kind of object that collectors describe not merely as a bag but as a wearable sculpture. In the years since Christie’s established a dedicated jewellery and accessories department in Hong Kong, the house has consistently demonstrated that the great leather goods of the 20th and 21st centuries deserve to be assessed by the same standards of rarity, craftsmanship and provenance applied to Old Master paintings. The 2026 sale continues that argument with conviction.
The following day belongs to jewellery. Magnificent Jewels on 26 May brings over 100 lots to the block, spanning natural pearls, Kashmir sapphires, Colombian emeralds and signed pieces by Cartier and Van Cleef and Arpels. The headline lot is an extraordinary jadeite necklace – the Ethereal Jadeite Necklace – a stone that connects the sale back to the very first auction Christie’s held in Hong Kong four decades ago, when jadeite jewellery appeared alongside Chinese paintings and set the tone for everything that followed. The Heavenly Harmony jadeite bead and spinel necklace is among the additional highlights. Together, these pieces underscore the enduring hold that fine jadeite exerts on Asian collectors, a hold that forty years of market history has only deepened.
The week reaches its conclusion with two days of horology. The Important Watches sales on 27 and 28 May are anchored by the Kronos: Titans of Time private collection, alongside two further named consignments that span the most coveted names in contemporary watchmaking. Among the standout pieces is a platinum Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillon ref. 5002P-001 – one of the most technically complex modern Pateks in existence, carrying twelve complications within a single case. A ruby and diamond-set Audemars Piguet Royal Oak ref. 26334OR brings colour and drama to a sale otherwise defined by precision and restraint. For the collector who measures the world in complications and case diameter, this is a week of rare abundance.
The international dimension of Hong Kong Luxury Week 2026 is not lost on those who attended Christie’s earliest sales in the territory. Preview exhibitions have already taken place across Taipei, Bangkok, Geneva, Shanghai and Macau, a circuit that maps the extraordinary breadth of the Asian luxury audience and confirms Hong Kong’s enduring position as the region’s auction capital. Christie’s Asia Pacific headquarters remains one of the most significant trading floors for objects of beauty and rarity anywhere in the world, ranking alongside New York and London as a genuine centre of global connoisseurship.
Forty years is, in the life of an institution, both a long time and no time at all. What Christie’s has built in Hong Kong since that inaugural January sale in 1986 is something rather more difficult to quantify than turnover figures: a deep and intimate relationship with Asian taste, Asian collecting habits and the singular conviction – shared by the house and its clients alike – that beauty across all its forms deserves a room of its own. In 2026, that room is Hong Kong, and the week of 22 to 28 May represents the fullest possible expression of what four decades of shared passion can produce.