Lego Is Turning Fads Into a $13 Billion Machine

Lego Is Turning Fads Into a $13 Billion Machine

Srividya Kalyanaraman

Tue, August 25, 2026 at 6:29 PM GMT+3 3 min read

THE GIST

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What do the World Cup, Formula-1 and Kpop Demon Hunters have in common? They contributed significantly to Lego's record revenue in the first half of the year. The Danish toymaker launched more than 330 new products in six months and has been riding the fad wave.

WHAT HAPPENED

Lego's new product releases this year included a replica of the official FIFA World Cup trophy, an 825-piece, buildable display model of Derpy Tiger and Sussie Bird from Kpop Demon Hunters and the F1 licensing deal lineup included Ferraris, Aston Martin, McLaren and Mercedes, each with a driver mini-figure.

But let's get into some numbers: The toymaker's revenue jumped 21% to about $6.55 billion in the first half of this year, with pre-tax profit surging a third to roughly $1.77 billion. But Lego has been breaking its own records every consecutive year. Lego's first-half revenue rose 12% to about $5.41 billion in 2025 on the back of a then-record 314 new sets, and it closed 2025 with revenue up 12% to about $13.05 billion, operating profit up 18% to roughly $3.44 billion. This means the 2026 first-half acceleration to 21% growth is a much faster pace than the year it just came off.

WHY IT MATTERS

What's the secret behind Lego's speed and success? Keeping the company private. Lego is owned 75% by the Kirk Kristiansen family's holding company, and 25% by the Lego Foundation. It has no public shares, ticker or disclosed IPO plans.

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This ownership structure allows the company to do whatever with its money without being answerable to investors every quarter. The toymaker has been using its riches to fund new factories and product lines from free cash flow rather than external capital, a structural advantage competitors publicly traded on Wall Street don't share.

This is also perhaps why the contrast with its rivals is so stark. Lego took the position as the world's largest toy company by revenue from Mattel a decade ago and has held it ever since.

In the first half of 2024, Lego's consumer sales grew 14% at a time when overall U.S. toy industry sales fell 0.4%.

Its diversification is the strategy. Instead of leaning too much on a single franchise, Lego has expanded itself from mainstream sports to pop culture, having its pulse on the hot and new, so to speak. This explains why volume growth, not just pricing, appears to be driving the increase.

WHAT'S NEXT

Even though Lego's CEO Niels Christiansen called the World Cup a "breakthrough" event for the company, sports-licensed toy lines typically see demand taper once the underlying event ends, unlike evergreen franchises such as Star Wars or Pokemon. But lucky for Lego, it doesn't have to choose. It's not either-or.