Brick Fanatics’ top 10 LEGO sets of 2024

It’s been another stellar 12 months for LEGO releases, but which sets came out on top for Brick Fanatics in 2024? Join us as we count down our top 10 LEGO sets of the year…

2024 may not have burned as brightly as 2023 on the whole, but there were still plenty of sets worth your time this year from across the LEGO portfolio. Whether you’re into giant flaming embodiments of evil, cute woodland critters or technical showstoppers, there was – as always – something for everyone over the past 12 months.

We’ve gone hands-on with dozens and dozens of those sets in 2024 and have now whittled them all down to our 10 favourite new LEGO launches in 2024. Check them all out below, and don’t forget to sound off in the comments on your top picks for the year (and whether you agree or disagree with our choices). Keep an eye out for more end-of-year celebrations in the days and weeks to come, too.

This list was compiled with input from across the Brick Fanatics team.

10 – 31154 Forest Animals: Red Fox

Theme: LEGO Technic Price: £44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 Pieces: 667 Release date: March 1, 2024

Narrowing down what might well be the best year for LEGO Creator 3-in-1 ever to just one set was no mean feat, but 31154 Forest Animals: Red Fox received the most nominations of any set in this theme from Brick Fanatics’ staff in 2024. It’s a great way to kick off the top 10 too, because everything about this trio of woodland creatures demonstrates why Creator 3-in-1 is at the top of its game right now.

The sculpting that’s gone into realising the fox is unparalleled at this scale, and would realistically be enough to sell this set all on its own. But toss in two alternate builds that are equally as strong as the primary model with a beautifully-constructed owl and squirrel, and suddenly you’re looking at a difficult decision to make – the solution to which will inevitably just be biting the bullet and buying three of them.

9 – 42179 Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit

Theme: LEGO Technic Price: £69.99 / $74.99 / €79.99 Pieces: 526 Release date: March 1, 2024

LEGO Technic as a theme is often reserved for engineering marvels like cars, construction machines, and so on, so 42179 Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit is a breath of fresh air that only 2024’s focus on space could bring. The overall design is simple but effective, showing off the orbits of the Sun, Earth, and Moon in tandem with one another with some clever use of Technic gears.

Those gears allow for interactivity that you might actually end up using, seeing as it can be put to work while on display on a shelf. Having a normal working scientific model of the planets feels stuffy – but a LEGO one? Instantly cooler and instantly more intriguing for those interested in space at any age. In a year full of space-themed models, this one stands out for sure.

8 – 80113 Family Reunion Celebration

Theme: LEGO Chinese Traditional Festivals Price: £89.99 / $129.99 / €99.99 Pieces: 1,823 Release date: January 1, 2024

The LEGO Group’s annual Lunar New Year sets are always a treat – detailed, inventive, filled with storytelling and portraying a style of architecture that otherwise doesn’t always get a lot of play within the LEGO catalogue. Despite the bar having always been fairly high for these sets, 80113 Family Reunion Celebration manages to raise standards even higher, with a set depicting a Chinese restaurant that not only appeals to those who would normally consider a Lunar New Year set, but also to anyone who loves a good LEGO building.

This set draws very clear and obvious inspiration from the long-running Modular Buildings Collection, but it’s not so detailed and cluttered that more play-oriented fans can’t get their fingers into the set’s interior to act out a traditional family meal for Lunar New Year. Given that 2025’s Lunar New Year sets don’t inspire quite as much minifigure-scale roleplaying potential, 80113 Family Reunion Celebration is likely to remain the pinnacle of LEGO Lunar New Year fun until at least the Year of the Horse, if not beyond.

7 – 10331 Kingfisher Bird

Theme: LEGO Icons Price: £44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99 Pieces: 834 Release date: February 1, 2024

10331 Kingfisher Bird proves that a set doesn’t need to be big to be beautiful. Building upon previous successes with smaller sets depicting insects and plants, this set is a must-have for ornithologists and bird-lovers of all walks of life. The set’s small tableau sees a kingfisher mid-flight, a fish in its beak, as it splashes out of the water and in between some bullrushes.

It’s a striking pose, filled with energy and life, and the bird’s dark colour scheme lends the set a level of sophistication and class that might not have been possible with a more vibrant kingfisher. Add to this a veritable heap of translucent elements at the bottom to simulate splashes of water, and this is a set which, in spite of its relatively modest size, makes for an eye-catching display piece amongst any LEGO collection.

6 – 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge

Theme: LEGO Star Wars Price: £429.99 / $499.99 / €499.99 Pieces: 3,942 Release date: October 3, 2024

Much has been made of 75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge’s shortcomings, and they pretty much all focus on the minifigures and the price. And there are indeed bones to pick in both those departments – it’s obviously too expensive, and some of the minifigures are subpar for that price tag, like the phoned-in Bib Fortuna and a too-plain Threepio – but the core of this Ultimate Collector Series set is the build itself.

And where that’s concerned, there’s really very little to grumble about. It’s as comprehensive and involved as you’d expect and hope for from a UCS set, bringing the exterior of the barge to life as we see it on screen – to a greater scope and with more detail than ever before – while also packing out its interior with fun spaces for its characters to occupy. For Return of the Jedi fans, it doesn’t get much better than this. Just wait for it to go on sale…

5 – 21349 Tuxedo Cat

Theme: LEGO Ideas Price: £89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99 Pieces: 1,710 Release date: June 1, 2024

LEGO Creator 3-in-1 has been getting all the praise this year for its animal builds, even within this list, and rightly so – but the best LEGO animal of 2024 has actually arrived under the purr-view of LEGO Ideas. 21349 Tuxedo Cat takes full advantage of its budget to deliver something so strikingly life-size and realistic that it can easily fool you into thinking it’s the real deal when caught in your periphery.

Shifting from Damian Andres’s original pitch for a Siamese-Birman cross to a tuxedo cat was a sensible business decision first and foremost (many more people own tuxes), but has also helped to smooth out a design that can’t rely too heavily on small changes in colour and texture – these are still LEGO bricks, after all. It does mean that this isn’t as easy to recolour as you might have hoped, but for friends of felines it’s a must-have set of 2024. 

4 – 75389 The Dark Falcon

Theme: LEGO Star Wars Price: £159.99 / $179.99 / €179.99 Pieces: 1,579 Release date: August 1, 2024

With so many versions of the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy having been released over the years, it’s hard to get excited about yet another take on the iconic brick-built Corellian freighter. However, thanks to the animated LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy series on Disney+ turning everything we know about the Lucas-verse on its head, 75389 The Dark Falcon feels like something of a breath of fresh air.

Gone are the standard dull shades of grey present in previous iterations of the Millennium Falcon, to be replaced with bold Imperial black elements and foreboding Sith red pieces. There’s plenty to discover inside the craft too, with a removable throne, jail cell and a PS5 edition of the classic Dejarik game. Throw in six unique minifigures, including a stunning all-white Jedi Vader, and the LEGO Star Wars starship easily deserves a spot in this top 10 list.

3 – 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale

Theme: LEGO Ideas Price: £314.99 / $359.99 / €359.99 Pieces: 3,745 Release date: April 1, 2024

Veteran fans of Dungeons & Dragons and LEGO were in for a treat earlier this year with the release of 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale for the 50th anniversary of the game. This set epitomises the extensive source material of Dungeons & Dragons in one properly massive package, which is commendable on its own. Whether you know your D20 from a Beholder or only know fantasy from your time with LEGO Castle, there’s something for everyone in the LEGO Dungeons & Dragons set.

The designers behind this huge LEGO Ideas model didn’t have an easy task assigned to them, transforming a fan’s submission into a set that represents a huge game while also appealing to a general LEGO audience. Despite this, with its blend of iconic monsters, customisable characters and a build that mixes aspects of D&D with a narrative, 21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale is one set not to miss from 2024. The fact that it received a tie-in minifigure series later in 2024 doesn’t hurt either.

2 – 21350 Jaws

Theme: LEGO Ideas Price: £129.99 / $149.99 / €149.99 Pieces: 1,497 Release date: August 3, 2024

The LEGO Group has been toying around with both dioramas and Spielberg-inspired sets for the past few years, and while they’re not all winners, occasionally those two worlds combine to create something truly special. So it was in 2023 with 77015 Temple of the Golden Idol, and so it is again in 2024 with 21350 Jaws.

An engaging and rewarding build – trust us, you will be surprised on more than one occasion by the way the boat comes together – culminates in a display piece that builds on X’s original LEGO Ideas submission in all the right ways, not least adding a base and a semblance of the sea to give 21350 Jaws a sense of setting and context. It’s everything you’d want from a LEGO Jaws set and more, and only narrowly missed out on first place in this list.

1 – 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr

Theme: LEGO Icons Price: £399.99 / $469.99 / €469.99 Pieces: 5,471 Release date: June 1, 2024

Towers can be boring. Monochromatic sets can be boring. Massive sets can be boring. 10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr had the recipe to be impressive but boring – but thankfully it skirts all of those to be one of the most impressive sets we’ve seen this year, and has subsequently received enough nominations among Brick Fanatics’ staff to propel it to number one in this list.

Clever design and colour choices mean the building experience never feels like a chore, even though you’re constructing a proper monstrosity. For the darkest, most evil part of Mordor, the designers have also injected some classic LEGO humour into the interior to please fans of the franchise. And, of course, the glowing eye has been incredibly well recreated out of LEGO bricks, rounding off the entire set with a crucial centrepiece.

For LEGO The Lord of the Rings fans this is now two home runs in a row (hot on the heels of 10316 The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell), and bodes very well for what’s said to be on the cards in 2025…

Brick Fanatics‘ top 10 LEGO sets of 2024

Rank	LEGO set	Price	Pieces	Release date
1	10333 The Lord of the Rings: Barad-dûr	£399.99 / $469.99 / €469.99	5.471	June 1, 2024
2	21350 Jaws	£129.99 / $149.99 / €149.99	1,497	August 3, 2024
3	21348 Dungeons & Dragons: Red Dragon’s Tale	£314.99 / $359.99 / €359.99	3,745	April 1, 2024
4	75389 The Dark Falcon	£159.99 / $179.99 / €179.99	1,579	August 1, 2024
5	21349 Tuxedo Cat	£89.99 / $99.99 / €99.99	1,710	June 1, 2024
6	75397 Jabba’s Sail Barge	£429.99 / $499.99 / €499.99	3,942	October 3, 2024
7	10331 Kingfisher Bird	£44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99	834	February 1, 2024
8	80113 Family Reunion Celebration	£89.99 / $129.99 / €99.99	1,823	January 1, 2024
9	42179 Planet Earth and Moon in Orbit	£69.99 / $74.99 / €79.99	526	March 1, 2024
10	31154 Forest Animals: Red Fox	£44.99 / $49.99 / €49.99	667	March 1, 2024

Let us know your top sets of 2024 in the comments below or on our socials.

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