Horological Meandering

But a brand can’t nominate its own watch, can it? You mean just their colleagues. Actually, since people can vote for themselves, I guess a brand can do the same. But there still needs to be a minimum number of votes I would think.

The nominations made by the GPHG Academy only serve to approach brands and encourage them to enter their watches, but ultimately it is entirely made up of brand entries in the first round. The GPHG will not accept an entry based purely on nominations alone as there is a fee to be paid, a small amount for the first round, then an additional fee if the watch is selected for the second round.
If there is a direct link between a jury member (jury being those selected from within the academy that particular year), they cannot vote on the categories which that brand entered in the second round. They're free to do so in the first round though, but then, most of the time the composition of the jury is not finalized until after the first round.

to at least be aware of any possible biases.

Apologies, the jury restriction is actually in the third round, i.e. when there are only six watches per category. At that point, the jury must meet in person to make their votes, while the GPHG Academy also votes again, but the entire academy of more than 600 people is then counted as one jury member vote. It would honestly be quite difficult for any person or even a small group of people linked to a particular brand to have a significant influence.

It's getting more 'normal' for these types of pay-for-play schemes to self-reinforce the industry. It's a great way to bring in paid press members too, to self-reinforce the scheme. Hypebeast and the like... you know.

But I just looked it up and see it is out of my sphere of possibility, even though I like their watches.

For me I never understand bovet. It is a brand I don't know much about, their design aesthetic is not my style, and I see their prices and I am blown away at how high they are. . I'm sure a super high quality watchmaker, but really amazed.

The Octa 8 days and Arnold&Sons runners up.

I‘ve never even heard of Behrens, need to look them up… does anybody know the company or watches?

Some interesting designs

Thanks for sharing, Captain.

Very cool, especially if you need to know the time on Mars.

Looking through the nominees, this is very interesting artistically and mechanically imho.