Rolex Officially Discontinues the GMT-Master II Pepsi

Most years, the first day of Watches & Wonders is all about what Rolex introduces. This year, one of the biggest stories is what they removed. The GMT-Master II Pepsi — ref. 126710BLRO in steel and ref. 126719BLRO in white gold — is gone. Both references have been pulled from the catalog, and as of April 14th, the product pages on rolex.com return nothing.

We called this one. Back in March, we published a piece laying out the case for discontinuation — the 126710BLRO had disappeared from the websites of Rolex-owned Bucherer, Ben Bridge Jewelers, William Barthman, and others, while secondary market listing prices were spiking toward 2022 all-time highs. A few weeks later, we called it outright: the Pepsi was being discontinued at Watches & Wonders 2026, and we predicted the white gold reference would go with it.

Why This Matters

Covering a discontinuation on the first day of the show is not something we do often. New releases dominate the conversation at W&W, and for good reason. But the Pepsi GMT is not a typical reference. Along with the steel Daytona and steel Submariner, it sits in a category of its own — one of the most culturally significant modern Rolex sports watches ever made, full stop.

Image Source: Hodinkee

The steel ceramic Pepsi debuted at Baselworld 2018 on a Jubilee bracelet and became an instant icon. It was the watch that defined the modern steel sports Rolex craze — "waitlists" stretching years, secondary market prices running two to three times retail, and a level of mainstream cultural visibility that few references have ever achieved.

The Pepsi colorway itself goes back to 1955, when it appeared on the original GMT-Master ref. 6542 as a tool for Pan Am pilots tracking two time zones. Red for day, blue for night. It ran through the ref. 1675 and the ref. 16710, disappeared from the steel catalog entirely between 2007 and 2018 when Rolex moved to ceramic bezels and hadn't yet cracked a stable blue and red Cerachrom insert, and then came roaring back eight years later as one of the most wanted watches on the planet.

Now it's gone again.

What's Left in the GMT Lineup

The steel GMT-Master II catalog now consists of three references: the ref. 126710BLNR in blue and black, the ref. 126710GRNR in grey and black, and the left-handed ref. 126720VTNR in green and black. All three are available on either the Oyster or Jubilee bracelet. No red bezel remains anywhere in the steel lineup.

It is worth noting that in 2022, Rolex filed a patent describing a manufacturing process capable of producing a stable red and black ceramic bezel insert — the "Coke" colorway, named after the original GMT-Master II ref. 16760 that debuted in 1982. That patent has been sitting there for four years. Whether a Coke arrives at a future W&W is anyone's guess, but Rolex has the engineering groundwork in place. For now, red is absent from the catalog entirely.

The Secondary Market

Figure Source: Chrono24

The pattern is familiar. It played out with the Submariner Hulk in 2020, and with every other beloved reference Rolex has retired. Collectors who spent years unable to get one at retail will now be competing with people who understand what it means when Rolex closes a chapter permanently.

The ref. 126710BLRO spent eight years as one of the most wanted and least available watches on the planet. It joins a lineage of GMT-Masters that defined their era: the ref. 6542, the ref. 1675, the ref. 16710. The steel ceramic Pepsi will be remembered as the icon of the modern steel sports Rolex era — the watch that launched a thousand waitlists, and the one that finally ran out of time.

Watches & Wonders 2026 is underway in Geneva, and we're covering every Rolex release as it happens. Check back on the Everest Journal daily — we'll be going deeper on each of these references as the week unfolds, and there's plenty more to come.