LEGO's Adult Strategy Pays Off With 21 Percent Revenue Jump

LEGO's global revenue grew 21 percent between June and August this year, on top of a 12 percent gain across 2026 overall. A significant chunk of that growth is coming from adults buying sets for themselves - not as gifts for children. Eight years ago, LEGO made a deliberate decision to go after adult builders properly. Not just AFOLs who'd never stopped, but people who'd built as kids and drifted away, or never touched bricks at all. Julia Goldin, LEGO's Global Chief Product & Marketing Officer, told the Wall Street Journal that the strategy was to give adults "the things they would love to build now." The results are fairly hard to argue with.

The adult range now sits at 225 sets on LEGO's website - 13 more than were listed in June - out of over 2,700 products in total. You know, sets like the Nintendo Game Boy, Van Gogh's Sunflowers, houseplants and a Polaroid camera give you a sense of who LEGO is pitching to: people who want something to build and display, not a box to stick under the stairs. Goldin made a point worth sitting with: bonsai trees rank in the top 10 for men and teenage boys, and Speed Champions F1 cars appear in the top 10 for teenage girls. The assumptions about who builds what don't hold up.

This fits within a broader retail shift. Adult-only households accounted for 55 percent of US toy sales in the first half of this year, with spending among the over-18s up 25 percent compared to the same period in 2025. LEGO's Olivia Rodrigo collaboration this summer - five sets including a guitar, flower bouquet and record player - shows the company leaning hard into that audience, and for now at least, it's working.

source www.independent.co.uk.