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“I’m obsessed.” “This is cooler than I imagined.” “I’m a Lego nerd, so I’m excited to put these things to the test.” These are just some of the reactions my fellow CES attendees had about the Lego Smart Bricks I saw CES 2026 in Las Vegas. The technology-packed toys include an array of sensors capable of detecting other building blocks nearby, lighting up and playing music. There’s also the coolest Star Wars sound effect, but you’ll have to read on to find out more about that.
New Star Wars Lego smart brick sets will arrive on March 1. And yes, that means your TIE Fighters and smart Star Wars minifigures will interact, make sounds and activate lights.
It was Lego Complex robotics combinations before in Several iterations -I remember when Lego had color sensors in the bricks and accelerometers. And played with Super Mario Lego sets Which contains small characters that can jump on other bricks and play games. These new smart bricks seem like a combination of some of these ideas, but they’re also a more advanced way of making bricks recognize and activate larger buildings. Read on to learn about the smart brick sets that Lego has to offer Consumer Electronics Show 2026.
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Sensor-studded bricks know where they are
The new Smart Bricks, parts of what Lego calls the Smart Play system, are the size of a regular 2×4, but have application-specific integrated circuits, or ASIC chips, inside them. There is a set of sensors: an accelerometer measures tilt and movement. There are speakers and synthesizers on board to quickly generate sounds, and ambient LED lights. They communicate with each other via Bluetooth. There are magnetic coils that sense proximity to other special Lego Smart Tag tiles and smart minifigures, which have their own built-in tags that bricks can sense proximity to.
The bricks can be used in multiple Lego sets, and can recognize multiple Smart Tags and Smart Minifigures at once. Each one can send a code to the bricks to generate different lights and sounds.
What does all this look like when you play? Well, I haven’t tried it yet, but I will soon. I will update this story when I do. But I’ve seen Lego executives demonstrate how it works at CES on stage during the keynote presentation, and it works entirely by proximity. When placed on blocks of different colours, they can recognize those colours. Or several bricks can connect and mirror each other. Brick can recognize distance in 3D space, even at a distance. To activate it, it looks like you shake the bricks a little before playing.
What’s exciting to me is that Lego is promising a distributed network across as many bricks and markers as you want to connect to, or games you can invent where vehicles know how far apart they are from each other. Or who knows?
Star Wars sets will interact with all the Smart Tags, minifigures and bricks.
Star Wars sets get Smart Brickified technology
The new Star Wars Lego sets coming March 1, which will debut all this technology, range in price from $70 to $160. There’s a $70, 470-piece TIE Fighter set with one smart tag and one smart minifigure (Darth Vader), a $100, 584-piece X-Wing set with five smart tags and two smart minifigures (Luke and Leia), and a $160 Throne Room Duel and A-Wing set, which has five smart tags and three smart minifigures (Luke, Palpatine, and Vader).
Smart Play ships can light up and make shooting sounds as they fly around each other, and lightsaber battles work with minifigures getting closer to each other while holding them on sticks. It looks pretty cool, honestly, and the Star Wars sets seem to focus on using bricks to make the vehicles look like they work, making the Lego sets look like a fancier pre-made toy. It brings back my spaceship toy fantasies when I was a kid.
Where will it end up next?
What it looks like to me is a way for Lego to start getting some of that technology active within a broader range of sets, beyond the specific, larger Mario figures in Nintendo sets that have handled the tech parts before. But none of the Smart Play collections announced in March focused on robots. Instead, it’s Star Wars that gets Smart Brickified first. I’m kind of surprised by that, and I wonder if robots will come in the future. There’s much more potential for sensor-studded bricks like this than just playsets.
I’m also curious to see how many Lego sets will get these smart bricks and smart play systems…and how long they’ll last. The brick promises years of play and can be recharged contactlessly using a mat. I actually have a collection of tech-enabled Lego sets from years past, including models that Lego doesn’t make anymore. Legos last for decades, but will Smart Play be able to withstand the toys’ longevity? I’m curious to know more.