For about 24 hours this week, Indonesia’s e-Sertifikasi certification database had a Garmin product listed that Garmin has spent two years insisting it would never build. On August 12, 2026, a filing appeared under certificate number 125338/DJID/2026, submitted by PT Garmin Indonesia Distribution, for a device labeled the CIRQA Smart Ring. Built in Taiwan. By August 13, it was gone.

Nobody at Garmin has confirmed anything. That’s normal — certification leaks almost never come with an official statement attached. What’s not normal is the company involved. Garmin’s own executives stood on a stage in 2024 and explained, in detail, why a ring wasn’t happening. Then Garmin filed paperwork for one anyway.

Quick Verdict

	What’s Known
Source	Indonesia’s e-Sertifikasi database, certificate #125338/DJID/2026
Filed	August 12, 2026 — removed August 13
Filer	PT Garmin Indonesia Distribution
Manufacturing	Taiwan
Rumored specs	Sleep tracking, HRV status, Body Battery, no mandatory subscription
Rumored price	$200–$250
Garmin’s official position	Ruled out a ring at its September 2024 Health Summit

Best for: Anyone tracking whether Garmin follows Oura and WHOOP into the ring category after building the CIRQA band. Skip if: You’re ready to buy a smart ring today — nothing here is confirmed, priced, or shipping yet.

What Did the Certification Filing Actually Show?

Here’s the part people are searching for, stripped down to what’s verifiable:

1. A device named “CIRQA Smart Ring” appeared in Indonesia’s e-Sertifikasi database on August 12, 2026, under certificate number 125338/DJID/2026.
2. The filer was PT Garmin Indonesia Distribution — Garmin’s own local distribution entity, not a third party or a shell filing.
3. The listed manufacturing origin was Taiwan, consistent with how Garmin builds most of its wearable hardware.
4. The word “RING” appeared directly in the model name field — a field applicants fill in deliberately, which is why outlets treated this as more than a clerical mix-up.
5. The filing was pulled within 24 hours, on August 13, before most outlets had finished writing it up.

The5KRunner’s breakdown of the filing has the clearest rundown of the database entry itself. TechTimes, Notebookcheck, GadgetsAndWearables, and Wareable all independently picked up the same certificate number and filer name within a day of each other, which is the part that separates this from a random rumor. Independent outlets pulling identical filing details from a public database is about as close to confirmed as a leak gets without Garmin saying a word.

Garmin Said This Wasn’t Happening

This is the detail that makes the leak worth a full post instead of a passing mention.

At Garmin’s Health Summit in Prague, September 2024, Joe Schrick (VP of Fitness) and Scott Burgett (Senior Director of Health Engineering) were asked directly why Garmin hadn’t built a ring while Oura and half the industry had. Their answer wasn’t “it’s not a priority.” It was a specific, technical case against the form factor. The5KRunner’s interview with both executives laid it out: wrists have more room for LEDs, more power budget, and better signal-to-noise ratio than a finger, especially for the low-motion states where recovery metrics matter most. A ring might be more comfortable. A watch, they argued, is simply the better sensor platform.

That’s not vague corporate hedging. It’s an engineering argument, made on the record, by the two people most responsible for Garmin’s sensor roadmap. Garmin Rumors covered the same comments and treated them, reasonably, as close to a permanent answer.

Twenty-three months later, Garmin’s own distribution arm filed a ring for certification. Either the engineering argument stopped applying, or Garmin decided a compelling engineering argument isn’t a reason to skip a category everyone else is making money in. Both are plausible. Neither has been confirmed.

Why This Reads as a Follow-Up, Not a Reversal Out of Nowhere

Garmin didn’t go from “no ring, ever” straight to a certification filing. There’s a device in between: CIRQA, the screenless recovery band Garmin launched in July 2026 as a one-time-purchase alternative to WHOOP’s annual fee. We reviewed it at launch — strong hardware, real ECG, full Garmin Connect integration, no subscription. The open question at the time was whether Garmin’s recovery algorithm could hold up against WHOOP’s years of tuning.

CIRQA proved Garmin was willing to compete on WHOOP’s exact turf: passive, screen-free, all-day monitoring. A ring is the logical next step in that same fight, except the competitor it’s built to undercut isn’t WHOOP anymore. It’s Oura.

That tracks with the rest of the site’s coverage of this category this year. Google shipped the Fitbit Air at $99.99, no subscription. Samsung folded WHOOP-style scoring into the Galaxy Watch 9 for free. Even Apple is reportedly weighing a screenless tracker of its own. Every major player that isn’t Oura has spent 2026 picking a side in the no-subscription fight. If this filing is real, Garmin just picked a fight with the one company that started the ring category in the first place.

Why Oura, Specifically

CIRQA competed with WHOOP on price and ecosystem. A ring competes with Oura on comfort and compliance — the thing rings do better than any wrist-worn device, subscription or not.

Here’s the math that makes a Garmin ring interesting if the rumored pricing holds:

	Oura Ring 4	Rumored Garmin Ring
Hardware	$349	$200–$250 (estimated)
Subscription	$5.99/month required for full app access	None reported
Year 1 cost	~$421	$200–$250, one time
3-year cost	~$565	$200–$250, one time

Oura built the smart ring category and has run it largely unchallenged since 2022 — four-plus years of sensor tuning, sizing refinement, and app development most competitors haven’t matched. That head start is real, and pricing alone doesn’t erase it. But Garmin already proved with CIRQA that “cheaper, one-time purchase, real sensors” is a message people respond to. A ring priced at roughly half of Oura’s three-year cost, backed by Garmin Connect’s 40 million users, would be the most direct threat Oura has faced since the category started.

Timing: Why October Makes Sense

Certification filings tend to show up months before a public launch, not weeks. Regulatory approval, especially across multiple countries, takes time to line up before a company is ready to announce. A mid-August filing puts a plausible launch window in October — late enough to have finished testing, early enough to hit shelves before the holiday buying season that every wearable maker cares about.

That’s a guess, not a date Garmin has given anyone. The filing itself was pulled within a day, which either means Garmin filed too early and yanked it to avoid exactly this kind of coverage, or the timing was accidental and someone at PT Garmin Indonesia Distribution jumped the gun on paperwork that wasn’t supposed to go live yet. Both read the same way from the outside: a product further along than Garmin wants known right now.

Is Garmin Making a Smart Ring?

Short answer: almost certainly, eventually — but not confirmed, priced, or dated as of this post. A certification filing from Garmin’s own Indonesian distribution entity, independently verified by multiple outlets, is stronger evidence than a typical rumor. It is not a Garmin press release. Until Garmin says something on the record, treat “CIRQA Smart Ring” as a real device in testing, not a real product you can buy.

Who Should Care

Current Oura subscribers: Nothing changes today. If your ring works and you’re not bothered by the $5.99/month, there’s no reason to wait on a device with no confirmed price or ship date.

Anyone who bought CIRQA for the no-subscription pitch: Worth watching. If Garmin ships a ring with the same one-time-purchase model, it’s the clearest sign yet that Garmin sees CIRQA less as a one-off product and more as a pricing strategy it plans to repeat across form factors.

Ring shoppers waiting to decide: Wait a bit longer if you can. A rumored October launch is close enough that buying an Oura Ring 4 today and finding out Garmin undercuts it by $150 a month later would sting. Not close enough that you should assume the ring ships on schedule, or at all — Garmin pulled the filing for a reason, and that reason isn’t public.

The Bottom Line

Garmin told the industry, on the record, that a smart ring didn’t make engineering sense. Then its own distribution arm filed certification paperwork for one, got caught, and pulled it a day later. That’s not proof Garmin is shipping a ring in October. It’s proof Garmin is testing one seriously enough to need regulatory approval — which is a different, more advanced stage than “internal debate.”

If the rumored pricing holds, this is the first genuine price threat Oura has faced since it created the category. If it doesn’t ship, Garmin joins the list of companies whose leaked hardware never made it past a pulled certification filing. Either way, the engineering argument Garmin made in 2024 just got a lot harder to take at face value.

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Reporting based on filing details independently confirmed by The5KRunner, TechTimes, Notebookcheck, GadgetsAndWearables, and Wareable, cross-referenced against Garmin executives’ September 2024 Health Summit comments reported by The5KRunner and Garmin Rumors. No product, price, or launch date described here is confirmed by Garmin. Details reflect reporting available as of publication date and are subject to change.