Lego launches ‘biggest innovation in decades’ with electronic smart bricks

Lego is launching a first-of-its-kind “smart brick”, which the Danish toy maker has described as its “biggest innovation” in decades.

The new brick looks and clicks into place like a regular one but its advanced electronics sense other smart bricks and minifigures and respond with real-time audio or light effects.

It was unveiled by the company at the Consumer Electronics Show CES 2026, which is being held in Las Vegas this week.

The smart bricks and figurines run on two AAA batteries and form a network with other such blocks using Bluetooth – another Scandinavian invention.

A built-in accelerometer detects how the blocks are being moved, and the bricks can respond by producing sound and light effects, tilting and make gestures, Lego said on Tuesday.

“Each smart minifigure reacts differently to its environment with unique sounds, moods and reactions,” the company notes on its website, “all of which are played through the smart brick.”

Lego said it was able to fit so many electronics parts into the new blocks by skipping wires, instead using inductive charging coils similar to those in electric toothbrushes and modern smartphones. The coils in one block could be used to sense nearby smart bricks and minifigures, Lego researchers found, enabling them to develop “an entire positioning system from the ground up”.

“The Smart Play System is our most revolutionary innovation since the creation of the minifigure in 1978,” the company said.

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The smart building blocks are slated to be sold from March 2026, each coming with its own colour-recognition scanner and a sound synthesiser “that plays almost any sound”.

The bricks can be wirelessly charged with a pad.

New smart minifigures of Star Wars characters Darth Vader, Luke Sky Walker and Princess Leia have their own “unique personalities”, Lego says, adding their sounds, moods, and reactions will vary depending on the world around them.

“Through the sounds the smart brick makes, you will be able to tell which smart minifigure might enjoy flying through space in a starship,” the company said.

“You’ll notice that a more nervous character might be a bit more… hesitant.”

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Lego gained popularity for its simple plastic bricks before venturing into video games, movies, and digital experiences after the turn of the century, though the company says its core focus is still on physical play.

Industry experts say the smart bricks may be an attempt by Lego to introduce more interactive feedback in children’s play, competing against phones or computers that they increasingly spend their time on.

Lego seems to acknowledge as much.

“We challenged ourselves to create an alternative to screens. Something that could be physically interacted with in ways never thought possible before,” it says on its website.

The new technology “unlocks an opportunity for interactivity, new dimensions of responsiveness, more social play and more storytelling”, chief product officer Julia Goldin said.