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According to StoneWars, the Arlong Park set is going to retire by the end of July, with Buggy's Circus Tent and Windmill Village retiring by year-end 2026. I wonder how well the theme does. The sets seem to mostly have been well-received (not by me but generally I mean :-)), and a lot of One Piece fans seem to have bought the entire line straight away, but I've also noticed them being discounted a lot lately; Amazon currently has the Baratie for like -38%, so I'm kind of wonderng if they didn't expect even more demand given the IP's popularity. Anyway, if anyone feels their collection is terribly incomplete without Cowboy Mihawk duelling Smirky Zoro, now's your chance.

Thank you! All I've seen so far is people going "Well the interiors of the 2024 system are bad but it's still better than the 2021 one", and that's simply not true. In truth the interiors of the 2021 system were all over the place. Some sets like the Fluffy Encounter, Sirius Black's Escape, and the Dumbledore's Office Part of Dumbledore's Office were basically empty, but others like the Chamber of Secrets (I especially adore what they did for Lockhart's office in a small 8x8 module), the Polyjuice Potions Mistake, the Room of Requirement, and the Library Part of Dumbledore's Office, had excellent interiors. Much better than the 2024 system IMO. I agree with you that the only reason to buy the 2024 version is to get the silhouette right, and that's only if you have the space for it (and won't get the microscale castle instead for whatever reason) and don't mind the crappy, offputting connections (like the one between the Main Tower and the Great Hall). --- In other news, StoneWars has put out their EOL list early because apparently a bunch of sets are retiring by the end of July, 2026 (not year-end as they used to)! For HP these are: - Gringotts (which to me means that we might get a smaller playset Gringotts next year unless they do the bookshop first) - the small buildable Hedwig and Fawkes - the Sorting Hat (good riddance!) - Great Hall (!!!) - Hagrid's Motorcycle Accident (good riddance again, like the Sorting Hat this should never have been greenlit, even our local retailer who pretty much never discounts anything above -20% at the most had this at like a -40% discount) - Malfoy Manor (!!!) The outliers here, for me, are the Great Hall and Malfoy Manor. The latter didn't last long at all for such a highly-anticipated, never-been-done-before set, making me wonder if they'll shy away (again) from too-dark content in the future. Retiring the Great Hall just as the East Wing hits the shelves seems pretty nonsensical from a collector's POV, too, but then again it might simply be a space issue, plus preventing collectors from getting a feeling for the entire series before buying is kind of LEGO's new thing (see the Diagon Alley playset line). --- StoneWars also has the EOL list for year-end 2026 out but I guess this is subject to more change. Current notable entries include the Lovegood House (which if true would barely have made it a full year, see above what I've said for Malfoy Manor), the latest playset Diagon Alley set (QQS - that one retiring before the next one hits the shelves wouldn't surprise me at all), the book nook (can't have been much of a seller IMO), and several Hogwarts Castle modules: Herbology, Flying Lesson, and Charms Class. We haven't even found a way to connect the Flying Lesson with the rest yet, and it's already retiring? Thoughts?

Wicked has two minifig sets clearly aimed at adult collectors, and all the playsets have minidolls. We've had Disney sets with minifigs aimed at adult collectors before (43225, Snow White's Cottage, Disneyland themed sets like the train and castle ...).

Looks like it, yes. Both Dobby and the plants thing have been leaked to be a buildable fig/Botanicals. Someone in the Reddit comments mentioned another unknown set, 76478 with a list price of USD 130, but I haven't seen any of the well-known leakers confirm it.

Buildable figures are a trend across pretty much all themes. Even Star Wars has had a few (that awful Chewbacca, R2D2, and at least two versions of Grogu come to mind), Marvel has had like a bazillion versions of Groot, and HP keeps cutting back on playsets in order to swamp us with buildable Hedwigs (at least six versions I can think of immediately), Fawkes', Dobbys, that poorly designed patronus from a while back, and this year's demonic-looking pixie. Not to mention Botanicals in all but name i.e. the Mario Piranha plant and the HP Mandrake. As well as the SW helmets, Marvel gauntlets, and IMO truly bizarre concepts like the Disney dresses collection. I think it's just them trying to appeal to both adults and older teens - target groups who don't need playsets because well, they don't really play with their sets any more, but who are into buying merchandise of their favourite shows. But yeah, I couldn't say how popular Pooh is with young kids these days. Like Wicked he seems to be more of a thing in America than Europe.

The Pooh buildable fig looks nice, but the Piglet one? Am I the only one who finds it kind of hilarious how little the buildable figure resembles the minifig of the same character that's also included in the set? I guess they couldn't have afforded striped prints for the torso pieces. And I guess they couldn't have figured out a better way to do the ears at that scale. But I still don't think the build looks all that good overall.

Quoting myself because the September 2026 CMF series (71053) is Shrek (as leaked by MaxBaut, a very well-informed German leaker). He also leaked 72423 (Buildable Shrek & Donkey, 1403 pieces, USD 160 with a Puss in Boots minifigure) and 40923 (Shrek & Donkey & possibly other characters Brickheadz).

Yes, that's how I handle it. But a lot of people don't seem to, and publicly stress about what to buy for the latest GWP, or how much it sucks that another, better GWP comes along just after you've spent so much for the last GWP. Some of them seem to lose even track of how much money they're really spending and refer to what I would call significant purchases as "filler items" (i.e. "My cart only has EUR 130 and the treshold is EUR 250, I need to come up with a bunch of filler items. Any ideas?") Or they actually like a GWP they've gotten but can't justify keeping or even opening it because of the resale value. Or they brag in forums about how much they've sold it for to someone else. It just seems to suck a lot of joy out of the hobby, and to stress a lot of people out in different ways.

To keep on topic, one of them's the Borgin and Burke's GWP. It has a single reused fig, 190 pieces, let's say a list price of EUR 15 and that's already being very generous given actual EUR 15 sets like the Ford Anglia or the recent Sorting Ceremony. (LEGO list it at EUR 20 but come on.) At a list price of EUR 15 and the usual retail discounts I would buy it; I don't need it and I'm not sure where it would even fit but I like both Lucius and and Knockturn Alley. ;-) However, the only way to get it was to buy EUR 130 worth of HP sets on one specific September 1 when a) I had no time to go LEGO shopping and b) there was absolutely nothing I would have wanted to buy (my interest in HP mostly runs towards older sets), and the GWP is now usually listed for like EUR 50 plus shipping on my country's second-hand pages. (Germans are really very fortunate here due to the sheer size of their country and the number of listings, but I'm not German and international shipping adds up quickly if you can even find a seller that would undertake it.) So yes, I could absolutely get the set if I wanted to pay EUR 55 or more. For a very small, quick build with a single reused fig that other people got for free, that I don't need and don't really know where to put. And I'd probably feel bad even opening the box given how much money I'd just wasted. On the other hand I could take that EUR 55 and buy lots of other things, including LEGO sets I would get more enjoyment out of. So I'll pass. That's what I mean about LEGO making it hard to get their sets. Or at least it's one part of it. There's all the LEGO store exclusives - my country has a whopping two LEGO stores, both of which are hundreds of kilometers away. There's LEGO House exclusives. LEGO airport store exclusives! There's the LEGO online store which from what I hear lists quite a few sets that are supposed to be in production but in reality sold out, so even if you manage to order one they might just cancel your order. There's all the retailer exclusives. There's GWPs for specific amounts spent. There's GWPs for specific amounts spent on specific themes. There's even more specific GWPs only available with a single set and often sold out immediately. I know a German LEGO forum where a lot of people are talking about staying up till 1 am, snagging one of these exclusive GWPs, then selling it off immediately (whether they like the GWP itself or not) so they'll have gotten the main set at a price they can somewhat justify. That's absurd if you think about it - I can't even think of any other company, toy company or not, that does business like that - but perfectly normal in today's LEGO circles.

Wasn't the Lion Knights Castle also sold out in Germany way before it officially retired? Generally I'm no big fan of just how hard LEGO make it to buy their sets between the short times till EOL, sets being permanently sold out, GWPs, exclusives, and so in. There's a number of sets I would have bought if they'd been more readily available.

It's reddit. Apologies if everyone has already known this, but I don't actually own the sets so it was news to me. The Main Tower does look a lot like the left part of that background image in the Great Hall instructions and so it stands to reason that the East Wing will as well, plus it correborates with the already-leaked description of it.

Characters who are needed or otherwise a given IMO: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Bloody Baron (if the Slytherin Common Room's included, which I do think it will be) OR Myrtle if it's not, Lockhart, Ginny, Tom Riddle. That's 7 (and the basilisk). Characters who could be included as well: Crabbe and Goyle (but they might as well go with alternate polyjuiced faces for Harry and Ron especially since including only one would be odd and otherwise they'd take two slots), Draco, Pomfrey (no reason for her inclusion other than that she was missing from the Hospital Wing and this seems like something LEGO would do), Filch (and Mrs Norris), any random teacher like Sinistra that we haven't had before (akin to Kettleburn in the Main Tower set), Bloody Baron OR Myrtle (see above), Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, any random student extra (though probably not since we can't even fit all the characters that would make sense AND Penelope Clearwater was in the Hospital Wing). Honestly a lot of it depends on what exactly the East Wing entails. It's where most of the classrooms are. I expect Lockhart's class to be a given (because Lockhart is needed for the Chamber part anyway, they might as well kill two birds with one stone) but they might still give us another classroom and the corresponding teacher there (possibly even Trelawney whose class was a notable exclusion in the Hospital Wing since the East Wing sort of has towers). Also check out "Hogwarts East Wing prototype" at the usual place, there's someone claiming they have a good idea what the East Wing will look like from the outside. Thoughts?

The 2024 Marvel AC was heavily discounted even at LEGO's own stores (-40% if I remember correctly), the only other one I can remember seeing like this was the Disney one. So yeah I'd say it underperformed at least here. Last year we had Minecraft (instead of Marvel), Friends, City, Disney, HP, Star Wars, that's already six. HP reportedly doesn't get an AC this year so unless they pull something else (like Ninjago, which I've been wondering about myself) out of their hat there should still be a slot left. Yet it seems that Marvel and Minecraft have to share one slot for whatever reason.

I think the fact that Marvel didn't get one last year was a combination of the 2024 (Spidey-themed) one selling badly and Marvel getting its own Spidey-themed CMF series in 2025 - LEGO might have felt that people would not buy that and still want to fork out money for an AC in December. I'm more surprised that Minecraft doesn't get its own AC anyway given how well-received the 2025 one was - why do they have to share a slot with Marvel? Smart bricks? ;-) (Though those price to pieces ratios are actually kind of too cheap for smart brick sets IMO.)

City? Friends? Looking up 2025 sets on Brickset gives me 42 matches for Friends, 50 for City, and 48 for Ninjago. They're all themes with a narrow focus (City is like 99% vehicles these days) but a broad appeal.

Does Darth Vader celebrate Christmas in-story by putting on an ugly Christmas sweater? Would Nebula of GotG ever wear an ugly Christmas sweater with Thanos' face on it in-story? And what the heck is that Gingerbread AT-AT with a Gingerbread Darth Vader figure even supposed to be, again in-story? We get all of those because the target group celebrates Christmas and wants Christmas-themed LEGO sets. Ninjago has a huge Western following, so there's no reason we couldn't have ninjas in ugly Christmas sweaters or a gingerbread temple instead. Actually an AC wouldn't even really have to be Christmas-themed, it could just be the ninjas doing winter activities like skating and building snowmen and the like.

Around here there's plenty of HP advent calendars still available after Christmas, and I agree that this one was particularly bad. Though I don't think we've had a truly "good" one unless you count "removing characters and features that really should be in the set, then putting them in an AC so that people have to buy both" as "good". (Such as: Parvati in Yule ball robes who really should have been in the Clock Tower set, the fireplace for the Great Hall that really should have been in the EUR 200 Great Hall set, and so on.) Still I think there's something else at play here. The Disney AC sold very badly in 2024 (even LEGO discounted it on its own web site along with the Marvel one), yet Disney got another AC in 2025. Marvel did not (Minecraft did instead), but that might have more to do with the fact that they got their own Spiderman CMF series in 2025 (and the poorly-selling 2024 AC was Spiderman-themed as well), so LEGO might simply have wanted to avoid flooding the market in order to prevent buyer fatigue. Marvel are now set to get another AC even though the last one (2024) didn't sell well. The first Minecraft AC in 2025, on the other hand, seems to have been well-received but reportedly there won't be another in 2026. And Friends gets an AC every year even though I've seen shops here have two of them on shelves at the same time (the then-recent 2024 one and right next to it the discounted 2023 one) indicating that they don't sell all that well either. And why doesn't Ninjago, which is hugely popular with kids, ever get an AC? I think there might be a lot of internal politics at work here (i.e. Marvel and Minecraft having to share an alternating slot for some reason? And Ninjago being somehow never considered?) and also a lot of making decisions based on the competition (i.e. there's plenty of other toy companies offering ACs for girls so if Friends and/or Disney don't get ACs LEGO's effectively conceding the field).

Sure but neither of them are in a tower. By the same logic Slytherin could be on the ground floor or even first floor and still count as "dungeons-adjacent". I could see them putting it on the ground floor of the East Wing for example, which would be close to the Chamber of Secrets but not, you know, in a dungeon. Moreover the last underground common room we've had (Hufflepuff) was by far the worst of the three we've got, a pitiful-looking pull-out module with next to no defining features (you might as well rename it the Teacher's Lounge or A Teacher's Quarters and Office or whatever). I think Slytherin deserves a little more care simply because of its relative story importance, so it would actually make sense for them not to go the same route as with Hufflepuff. So far we haven't had any dungeon modules that looked good. The lack of walls is a distinct disadvantage - at least the upper modules like the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Common Rooms had the roof to work with. I'm already worried about what the Chamber of Secrets will look like; I can't see the pull-out module system conveying a sense of its grandeur (something the 2002 set managed very well).

Are you sure that LEGO care about the latter? From the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if the Slytherin Common Room were now up somewhere in the East Wing instead of a classroom or something. Both the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor Common Rooms are supposed to be located in towers, yet neither of them are in this version of Hogwarts. That said I would also be surprised if we got more than one ghost with the East Wing, so either Myrtle or the Baron (who likely comes with the Slytherin Common Room), not both.

Or it might simply be that of the last few Iron Man antagonists he's the most kid-friendly option. Inept attempt to conquer the Earth aside (and he didn't act of his own free will during that!), he's a trickster who has an antagonistic relationship with his brother. I can't see Marvel wanting to sell Thanos' personality (which boils down to "Genocide, yay!") to preschoolers.

CMF series 30 is rumoured to be based on a 2026 movie, a new IP that's never had sets before. A lot of people on reddit suspect that it might be Shrek 5. (I know it's from DreamWorks not Disney but figured that people here might be interested nonetheless.)

The usual place has a leak for the new CMF series (29). Characters will include a "cute witch" in case anyone wants to populate their wizarding worlds with new figs. There's also a "unicorn elf" of which there's already a picture, the outfit would work well for dress robes I think (it's yellow-skinned, though).

Just because LEGO base their sets on a specific part of a franchise doesn't mean that's the reason people buy them. LotR is at its heart a literary franchise, and I'm sure many people buy the sets because of their love of the books, not the movies (which the sets are barely even based on, i.e. Barad-Dur doesn't appear in the movies in that form). IMO as a books fan the LotR movies were okay-ish and the Hobbit movies were pretty terrible. There's certainly room for improvement in both cases when it comes to adapting the source material. It's not as clear-cut as you make it out to be with many other franchises, too. The HP theme is based on the movies but many people are HP fans because of the books. A lot of people buy the One Piece sets because they're fans of the anime, even though they're based on the Netflix show. If all the newer LotR content tanks (and I fully expect "Hunt for Gollum" to be Hobbit-levels of terrible, though it might still make money given the overall dearth of new LotR content) it won't change people's fondness of the original source material. By which I mean mainly the LotR book trilogy, and that is still an enjoyable read these days. If all the newer ST content tanks, people will still have TOS, TNG, DS9 and whatever you want to count after that. But like I've said a lot of it hasn't aged particularly well in terms of special effects, writing, and characterisation. It works for a certain target group because of nostalgia - like LotR does - but unlike LotR I doubt that it can draw in new viewers these days. EDIT: Fun fact - ever since I've written anything in this thread I'm being swamped with online ads for "ST: Starfleet Academy".

Yeah, I've always felt that DS9 was the last "big" ST show. Voyager wasn't as popular in my circles and anything after that even less so. The reboot movies were fun for what they were but ultimately forgettable. I know we still have Lower Decks and suchlike but I would consider ST more niche these days, no longer a huge cultural phenomenon. The same is true for LotR up to a point. But at the heart of it LotR will always be a litereary franchise, and the books are timeless classics. So I don't think it suffers as much from having no really popular new content as ST - a TV franchise - does. Anyone can still read LotR these days and admire the beauty of the language, whereas younger audiences probably can't watch the older ST content without cringing about the special effects and some of the writing and characterisation.

The problem with playsets is that they're mainly for kids, and - just like with LotR - there's no real target group here. Show me one kid these days who cares about Bilbo Baggins or Spock, let alone cares more about them than about Ninjago, K-Pop Demon Hunters, or what have you. So LotR is a fair comparison. BrickHeadz would probably make sense (both Picard and Spock would be very recognisable with little effort) as would dioramas. But I wouldn't expect small playsets (only small GWPs) and I certainly wouldn't expect minifig battlepacks because if LotR doesn't get these (where there's a lot of demand) there's no reason for Star Trek to get them. And actually Star Trek is even less culturally relevant than LotR these days. LotR regularly has new stuff come out (the Rings of Power series, and the Hunt for Gollum movie reported for 2027) whereas even the Star Trek reboot had its last movie what, ten years ago? This theme pretty much exclusively runs on nostalgia. As for future sets, the question should therefore be what is the most iconic to a certain target group (nostalgics in their mid-fourties that have the most disposable income). That's probably also the reason they started with TNG instead of TOS because the TNG target group skews younger. Also minifigs would be a main draw since that's what separates LEGO from the competition. I'd expect us to get the TOS crew sooner or later (the series itself may be a little too old but its still the most impactful part of Star Trek, everyone knows who Spock is!) and the DS9 crew as well, and for LEGO to pick subjects that reflect this. I.e. a Bird of Prey might be an iconic type of ship but who would it be manned by - a bunch of generic Klingons? Not likely when LEGO could instead make people pay for actual beloved characters. Maybe we could get the Bounty (from Star Trek IV, which is probably still one of the most beloved ST movies) which would allow us to get the TOS crew with it.