LEGO® SMART Play™ system is a true gamechanger for the LEGO System, the biggest innovation since the first minifigure in 1978. Starting in 2026, the LEGO SMART Play system will revolutionize the way we play with LEGO sets. It will bring creations to life by reacting precisely to how children play—all without the need for screens. No screens, as they would have required smart devices, which could have distracted from the physical gameplay experience. Simply put, they will be LEGO bricks that interact with play. While political tensions between the US and Denmark remain high over Greenland, LEGO debuted at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the world’s largest consumer electronics fair, presenting the rather intriguing Smart Play. At first glance, it looks exactly like a normal LEGO brick: no artificial-intelligence chips, humanoid robots, nor immersive headsets. Same shape, studs, philosophy but inside, it hides a dense concentration of technology: a microchip (a custom silicon ASIC chip, highly specialized and smaller than a single standard LEGO button) just a few millimetres wide, motion sensors, accelerometers, light detectors, tiny LEDs, a speaker, and a proprietary short-range wireless network that allows bricks to “talk” to one another. There is no visible Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth pairing, no app to download. The technology stays invisible, but the SMART Brick can detect the presence of SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures around it: Tags and Minifigures activate the SMART Brick and tell it what to do. Once activated, high-tech SMART Bricks respond to every movement, with a built-in game engine that creates unlimited reactions with dynamic lights and sounds. Shake it, and it activates. Move it quickly, and the sound changes. Tilt it, and it responds differently. Bring it close to other bricks or a minifigure, and it understands the context, adapting its behaviour accordingly. While the system behaves in an intelligent-seeming way, reacting to physical play much like a young child might expect, it isn’t driven by AI in the modern software sense — it’s more akin to advanced embedded logic and contextual sensing. Some describe it as “physical intelligence” rather than traditional artificial intelligence. To get started, you’ll need up to three key elements that work together to create the LEGO® SMART Play™ system: SMART Bricks, SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures. For example, you can build a helicopter and insert a SMART Tag helicopter inside. Add a SMART Brick near the SMART Tag: The SMART Brick then “becomes” a helicopter, reacting to your movements and playing with dynamic lights and sounds! Listen to it take off and fly, or flip it over and hear the alarm sound. Add a SMART Minifigure pilot and hear it react!
The real magic, however, emerges when storytelling enters the scene. In sets inspired by Star Wars, for example, an X-Wing engine’s sound changes depending on how you “fly” it; move Darth Vader close to Luke Skywalker and a lightsaber duel starts automatically. You don’t press buttons nor select options from a menu: You simply play—and the system follows you. What makes Smart Play particularly striking is LEGO’s deliberate refusal to turn it into a conventional digital platform: Children remain at the centre, there are no notifications, nor progress bars: The Smart Brick doesn’t tell you what to do—it reacts to what you do, as this is technology serving play, not the other way around. LEGO is innovating the physical object with a modular approach: the same intelligent brick can become anything, simply by changing the context around it. Smart Play is not a “smart toy” packed with features, it is a technology that amazes precisely because it stays hidden, leaving room for children’s imagination.
Read more on Lego.com
