CES 2026: LEGO touts AI-powered play with new sensory activated SMART Bricks and Minifigures
LEGO steps up its game, literally, unveiling an innovative AI-powered SMART Play System, designed for interactive play with new namesake figurines, boasting 3-D sensory detection that responds to a user's behavior with motion, lights, sounds, and more.
Cementing its relevance as a first-time presenter at the CES 2026 conference in Las Vegas on Monday, the Danish plastic interlocking brick-maker unveiled its first attempt to enter the tech-toy market: the new LEGO SMART Play System.
Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Marketing Officer at The LEGO Group (pictured above), and Tom Donaldson, SVP & Head of Creative Play Lab, took the stage for the launch event.
Calling it “the most revolutionary innovation since the creation of the minifigure in 1978,” the LEGO SMART Play System was created “to respond to how kids play.”
The new SMART system consists of three key parts – SMART Bricks, SMART Minifigures, and SMART Tags – all of which are said to “respond precisely” and in real time to how a kid actually plays with their LEGO.
“In other words, when you play, the SMART Brick plays back,” the company boasts of the cutting-edge system, which is being launched first as a Star Wars SMART Play System, due to its recognizability among all kids and the fun galactic and battle-ready sounds Logo could incorporate into the set.
The journey to create the new system started back in 2017 as a research initiative to discover “how kids were searching for a new way to physically play with their toys.”
The years-long collaborative effort involved experts from video gaming, electronic engineering, industrial design, user experience, architecture, computing, and sound, to name a few.
Making the bricks with “invisible technology” and making them compatible with regular LEGO bricks led the teams to create the SMART Bricks to “charge through a coil – like the one in your electric toothbrush.”
The build includes a bespoke “silicon ASIC chip smaller than just one standard LEGO stud” and an innovative positioning system that allows the brick to capture the brick's movements.
LEGO SMART Play System: Three key elements
The first piece of the collection – the SMART Brick – is described as a 2x4 LEGO brick that recognizes SMART Tags and SMART Minifigures.
“Packed with enough tech to launch a rocket to the Moon, it contains a built-in accelerometer that can detect how a piece is being moved in its environment, whether being twisted, turned, ot tapped by the user.
Next are the SMART Tags, which are “clever little tiles” that communicate with the SMART Brick so it “plays back,” interacting directly with the user’s movements.
Essentially, the tags tell the SMART Brick what kind of object or creature it should become and what sounds to respond with – whether a spaceship, helicopter, or toilet, LeEGO states.
The SMART Minifigures complete the set. LEGO says each SMART Minifigure, when placed next to a SMART Brick, will react differently to its environment using a synthetic soundscape, moods, lights, and more – all of which are played back through the SMART Brick.
Pulling it all together, LEGO explains if a child build helicopter out of LEGO's, places a helicopter SMART Tag into it, and then places a SMART Brick close to the SMART Tag – the SMART Brick “becomes a helicopter and reacts to how the child moves and plays.”
Using dynamic lights and sounds, the child may hear the helicopter take off and fly. When adding a SMART Minifigure pilot, the child hears the pilot react in real time to the maneuvers.
The SMART Play System can also present players with secret minigames, plot twists, and Easter eggs to spark imagination, ensuring a unique experience for each user and each play session., LEGO says.
Folks can begin to pre-order the SMART Play System starting January 8th. The Star Wars SMART Play Set is set to launch on March 1st.
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