Introduction to LEGO SMART Play
LEGO, the renowned toy giant, has made a significant appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026, unveiling its most ambitious project to date – the LEGO SMART Play system. This innovative platform is designed to bring physical play to life, leveraging technology to create a more interactive and immersive experience for users. At the heart of this system lies the SMART Brick, a tiny, custom ASIC chip embedded in a standard two-by-four LEGO brick, which enables the brick to recognize distance, color, and motion, as well as interpret the “personalities” of thousands of LEGO minifigures.
A presentation during the LEGO SMART Play launch event at Mandalay Bay Convention Center on Jan. 05, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada. David Becker/Getty Images for The LEGO Group
Key Features of the SMART Brick
The SMART Brick is a groundbreaking innovation that packs a plethora of features into a tiny package. It includes responsive lights, a color-recognition scanner to sense its surroundings, a sound synthesizer capable of producing a wide range of effects, and a built-in accelerometer that tracks how the brick moves through the air in real-time. This tiny brick works in conjunction with SMART tags and SMART minifigures, which contain unique digital IDs that guide how the SMART Brick should behave in different contexts.
Demonstrations and Capabilities
During a demo at CES, Tom Donaldson, senior vice president and head of Creative Play Lab at the LEGO Group, showcased the SMART Brick’s capabilities. He placed the brick on a panel divided into four colors and demonstrated how it lit up to match the color beneath it. The brick also responded with sounds that conveyed different emotions when attached to a LEGO yellow duck and moved through different positions.
The SMART Brick can sense proximity, changing its lights or emitting sounds when another brick moves closer or farther away. When placed on or near a SMART Tag, it instantly assumes whatever role the tag assigns it. SMART minifigures react uniquely to their environments through distinct sounds, moods, and behaviors, which are played through the speaker inside a nearby SMART Brick.
Launch and Availability
LEGO SMART Play is set to officially launch on March 1, with preorders for an all-in-one LEGO Star Wars SMART Play set beginning on January 9. This innovative system is poised to revolutionize the world of physical play, offering a new level of interactivity and immersion for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages.
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