Does LEGO Ideas need a rethink? Fan-powered platform hits new milestone

The current LEGO Ideas review round doubled within a week, highlighting an unprecedented level of growth for the fan-powered platform.

LEGO Ideas projects need to hit 10,000 supporters on the fan-based platform before they can enter the review round. From there, the LEGO Ideas team will evaluate which LEGO sets can and should be turned into real sets to be sold in stores and online. While the last few review rounds have seen between 45 and 55 projects qualify, an unprecedented level of growth has surged over the last week or so, causing the current review round to set a new record. Between July 7 and July 14 (the time of writing this article), the number of projects more than doubled, surging from 37 to 74.

At 74 projects (for now), the second 2025 review round exceeds the previous record holder, with the first review round of 2023 finishing at 71. With this round not close to over yet and many projects still accelerating to the 10,000 vote milestone, we can expect that record to climb even higher.

While it’s great to see so many fan designers get support on the platform, it raises some practical issues. The LEGO Ideas theme can’t support all of those projects, meaning it’s a harder job for the LEGO Ideas team to whittle down the selection. This could mean the approval stage takes longer, slowing down the time it takes for projects to get onto shelves.

The addition of the Parking Lot could help with this (and could even be part of the reason it was created). It offers a space to ‘park’ projects to be approved at a later date, rather than just discounting them early on. While the assumption had been that this was to give the LEGO Group time to negotiate licenses for sets based on third-party IP, it could also be to allow sets further consideration, with more compelling ideas for the team to go through.

What sparked the recent growth?

It’s not just the sets that have already gone past 10,000 supporters that have seen more growth. LEGO Ideas user SergentPousseVivant posted on reddit, highlighting a major growth spike on their project, Claude Monet’s House, between July 9 and 12.

“I never have that many votes by day and I see that several projects reached 10,000 votes in only 24 hours,” they wrote. “What’s happening? Is there a reason that there is more people these days?”

There is no clear answer. There’s plenty of speculation: a lot of the sets that passed 10,000 votes were linked to franchises, so some fans speculate that the projects gained traction on communities and forums related to those interests. However, sets like The Peace Lilly and Seashells Collection have also gained rapid traction recently, without any connection to an existing fandom.

It could simply be that there are more people interested in LEGO as a hobby nowadays. The LEGO Group announced record profits in 2024 in its most recent financial reports, with continued growth in the adult market. Considering you need to be at least 16 years old to vote on LEGO Ideas, that growing demographic could be having a knock-on effect here.

Ultimately, we can’t know for sure what’s causing the surge in voting on LEGO Ideas, but it does raise the question of whether the minimum threshold should be raised higher than 10,000 votes. With more people voting, is that number too low to really pick out the best of the best, especially with multiple sets based on the same IP often qualifying in the same review round? This week, two projects based on Hamilton qualified on the very same day, even.

If the rapid growth does continue, the LEGO Ideas team could well introduce changes to the platform, although there’s been no indication of any plans publicly just yet.

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