Lego’s product catalogue looks very different from the one it offered 20 years ago. The company now launches nearly three times as many sets each year, while the average set contains substantially more pieces and carries a higher listed price.
I used Brickset catalogue data to examine how the range changed between 2005 and 2025, focusing on the number of sets released, their size, listed US retail prices, licensed intellectual property and recommended age groups. The data makes the changes in Lego’s product range visible, although it cannot show which of them contributed most to revenue growth.
Lego is launching more sets
The number of sets released each year increased from approximately 400 in 2005 to more than 1,000 in 2025. The expansion was not confined to a brief launch cycle, with the catalogue growing particularly quickly during the 2010s and remaining above 800 annual releases throughout much of the past decade.
This tells us that Lego has expanded the breadth of its offer considerably, giving customers more themes, price points and products to choose from. It does not tell us how well those products sold, because the dataset records releases rather than sales volumes.
The average set has become larger
The number of pieces in the average set also increased, particularly after 2012. By 2025, the average set contained approximately 280 more pieces than it did in 2012.
That helps explain part of the rise in listed prices. A more expensive set is not necessarily the same product sold at a higher price when the set itself has also become larger and more complex.
Listed prices have risen
Average US retail prices increased sharply during the second half of the period, reaching approximately US$66 per set in 2025. Across the annual changes shown in the analysis, the average increase since 2015 was approximately 6.5%.
However, the catalogue cannot separate ordinary price inflation from changes in the mix of products being released. Larger sets, licensed products and a growing adult range can all raise the average price even when comparable individual products have not increased by the same amount.
Licensed products occupy more of the range
Licensed intellectual property accounted for approximately 10% of Lego releases in 2005 and 30% in 2025. The number of original Lego products also increased, but licensed themes represented a growing share of the expanded catalogue.
This is evidence that external franchises have become more important to Lego’s product strategy. It does not establish how licensing affected revenue, margins or contract negotiations, because none of those measures appears in the dataset.
The adult range has expanded since 2020
Products classified for customers aged 18 and over were almost absent from the earlier catalogue, but began appearing in greater numbers from 2020 and exceeded 100 releases in 2025. Products intended for younger customers still made up most releases, so the evidence points to an expanded adult segment rather than the core children’s range being replaced.
The higher prices visible during the same period are consistent with a shift towards larger, adult-oriented and licensed products. Without customer or sales data, however, the analysis cannot show whether adults were more willing to pay or whether these products generated better commercial results.
What the catalogue proves
The clearest conclusion is that Lego has substantially broadened and repositioned its range. It launches more sets than it did 20 years ago, the average set is larger, licensed products occupy a greater share of the catalogue and adult-oriented releases have become a meaningful part of the offer.
Those changes are consistent with premiumisation, but the distinction matters: catalogue data can show how the range changed, while establishing what drove Lego’s revenue growth would require sales volumes, customer demand and financial performance.