The best Lego sets for adults

The Mini Disney Castle set commemorates the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World and is a must-have for all Disney fans. It comes with a full-size vintage Mickey Mouse minifigure whereas the castle itself is made of mini bricks.

This set measures 21 cm high and 14 cm wide. For its size, it is very detailed and makes a great display item. It has a pearlescent golden tower and opalescent blue rooftop cones. It is compact, tidy, and looks very close to the real castle.

This set takes roughly an hour to put together and is not particularly challenging. So why not put on your favorite Disney movie, sit down, relax, and immerse yourself in nostalgia?

Read our Lego Mini Disney Castle review.

The Lego Simpsons House has a captivating exterior and treats you to a well-designed interior that closely mirrors the animated series. Each room includes iconic details like the TV with Itchy and Scratchy and the famous boat painting in the living room.

You get six fantastic characters; Ned, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, all of which have detailed outfits and expressive features. Ned’s ‘Hail to the Chef’ apron is a charming touch.

When it comes to value, this set delivers, especially considering its age and the fact it’s no longer in production. Building this set is a satisfying challenge. With 2,523 pieces, it offers a substantial project. Size-wise, it measures 23 cm in height, 42 cm in width, and 24 cm in depth. For any true Simpsons fan (which to be honest, is a lot of people) this set is a must-have!

Read our Lego Simpsons House review.

How does Wookiee pie taste? A little Chewie! Gosh, that is a good one! And very apt considering this set is all about the festive season. We love the Wookie holiday Life Day. If you’re a devotee of both holidays and Star Wars, the Millennium Falcon Holiday Diorama set is made for you!

Overflowing with holiday spirit, this compact set features details like a seating area, bed, doorway, and of course lightsabers. The highlight is the inclusion of five figures: Rey and Finn in festive Christmas jumpers, along with Chewie, BB8, and a Porg. Adorned with festive decorations such as a tree, fairy lights, and holly, the gang also enjoys a delightful dinner.

Star Wars and Christmas enthusiasts can rejoice as the Millennium Falcon Holiday Diorama was available at the Lego store from October 1st to December 31st, 2023. Measuring 8 cm high, 17 cm wide, and 12 cm deep, this set consists of 282 pieces and promises an enjoyable building experience. It’s a must-have for the holiday season!

Read our Lego Millennium Falcon review.

The Central Perk Lego set is a treasure trove of references to one of the most iconic 90s sitcoms, Friends. Join Joey, Ross, Chandler, Rachel, Monica, and Phoebe in Minifigure form. Oh, and Gunther too! Each character even has their unique accessories. For instance, Phoebe has her guitar, Ross a newspaper, and Joey a pizza! “Joey doesn’t share food!”

Not only does this set have a fabulous minifigure lineup, but the set itself effectively mirrors its onscreen counterpart. Central Perk has the iconic orange sofa and plenty of coffee cups, and considering it is a mini version, the layout is impeccable. You can even remove the area where the gang usually sits and a table at the back offering display options. This set is a must-have for all Friends fans for sure.

Read our Lego Friends Central Perk review.

Embark on an epic Lego voyage through time and space with the Doctor and his iconic TARDIS. Crafted by dedicated fans for fellow enthusiasts, this set masterfully encapsulates the Doctor Who universe. The design of this Lego Doctor Who set nothing short of spectacular, seamlessly merging the police box with the TARDIS bridge, granting you the choice to exhibit them united or individually. This set contains two Doctors, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi, along with Clara, a Weeping Angel, and two buildable Daleks.

While priced around $300 on Amazon, it proves a valuable addition for devoted Doctor Who devotees, even though it’s no longer in production. Surprisingly, despite its modest piece count of 625, it presents an engaging building challenge due to the intricacy of many components. Lego’s Doctor Who TARDIS set is an outstanding homage to the time-traveling spaceship, an essential collectible for fans who cherish the Doctor’s adventures.

Read our Lego Doctor Who review.

The Lego Big Bang Theory set pays delightful homage to the show. It features Sheldon and Leonard’s iconic living room, a favorite gathering spot for the gang. In terms of pricing, this set has appreciated since its retirement, making it a worthwhile investment due to its scarcity. Assembling it is a straightforward process and so it’s an ideal choice for building while enjoying the show.

The design exudes a charming simplicity, effectively capturing the essence of the TV series. It cleverly employs various elements to recreate the room’s gadgets and gizmos, perhaps setting a creative precedent for future Lego sets. You’ll discover all the iconic elements of the living room, from the telescope and DNA model to Sheldon’s cherished spot on the sofa.

The standout feature of this set is its minifigure lineup, featuring seven intricately detailed characters dressed to perfectly resemble their TV counterparts. Whether it’s Sheldon’s unmistakable Flash shirt or Raj’s purple jacket, the attention to detail is truly uncanny. And yes, even Lego Cinnamonan makes an appearance.

Read our Lego Big Big Theory review.

Lego Sonic the Hedgehog – Green Hill Zone set is a heartfelt tribute created by fans for fans. This set features iconic Sonic the Hedgehog in minifigure form, along with delightful buildable figures like Moto Bug, Crabmeat, and Robotnik. The design ingeniously replicates the game’s iconic elements, from suspended rings to the loop-de-loop. Its modular construction provides creative freedom, allowing you to choose various display arrangements.

You can change out TV designs and keep tabs on Sonic’s lives with the tile in the bottom right-hand corner. Priced reasonably at $79.99 (£69.99) on Lego’s website, it’s a must-have for Sonic enthusiasts. With 1,125 pieces, it presents both a challenge and a rewarding building journey, complete with a comprehensive instruction manual.

In summary, it’s a splendid homage to one of gaming’s most cherished franchises. It masterfully captures the essence of Sonic’s high-speed adventures.

Read our Sonic the Hedgehog Lego set review.

Following on from the Lego Friends kit, the officially licensed Lego The Office set provides the central locale of a popular TV show, and crams it with detail that make playful nods to the fictional world of its source material. There’s something about this set that takes us way back to the early, primitive Lego houses – and yet it’s a very contemporary build and a delight to get familiar with.

It’s based on The Office US; something worth bearing in mind for devotees to the UK version. But if you have any love for the American show, this could be the one for you. Just like its inspiration, it thrives in making the mundane reality of an office something wonderful.

Made in honor of Disney’s 100th anniversary, this is probably the coolest addition to the Brick Headz line yet. Paying tribute to some of the company’s oldest and most beloved animations, Brick Headz Disney includes a retro Mickey (in his Steam Boat Willie attire), the vintage icon Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the star of the first Disney animated feature-length movie, Snow White, and of course, the fairy who gives Disney its sparkle: Tinkerbell.

While we’re sure that there are plenty of kids who would love to receive this, it’s one set that genuinely appeals to all ages. Kids can play with it, while adults can use it as a display piece (or even play with it themselves if they want). Disney fans in particular are going to want to add this to their collections.

Lego’s Architecture theme has long targeted adult builders, bringing a hugely rewarding combination of creative building techniques, eye-catching minimalist design, and conversation-starting display pieces. The recent Lego Great Pyramid of Giza set offers one of the most ambitious, detailed Lego Architecture sets ever available.

Looked at alone, it certainly prevents a brilliant, stylish interpretation of perhaps the most famous pyramid there is. But lift off the outer shell, and you’ll find a detailed interior, with miniature versions of the building systems believed to be used to construct the looming structure.

The real pyramid’s core appeal, perhaps, comes down to two mysteries; what it contains, and how it was built. This Lego set excels in leaning into both those enchanting notions.

Let’s get straight to it with this one. The Lego Optimus Prime set – based on the most iconic of Transformers – actually transforms. So you get to build a Lego set and end up with a robot that can change into a truck. We can’t quite work out if that means this is one toy or three, but it’s certainly a remarkable set.

Because this is a Lego kit that excels in both form and function. It transforms well, it looks great as a truck, and it’s a striking take on Optimus Prime himself, managing to feel imposing and present.

Mid-switch over, it can feel a little flimsy – and you’ll need to add or remove a small number of bricks as well as twist and pivot parts – but it all locks together well. In robot mode, Optimus has a good deal of articulation, and the detail throughout it is sublime.

Lego Succulents is our favorite of all the horticultural Lego sets released in recent years – which between them stand as some of the most distinct the Danish firm has ever put out. We’ve seen bouquets and wreaths and bonsai trees that all do a remarkable job of capturing organic forms from rigid plastic bricks. Almost every such set seems to proudly assert: ‘Yes – this is what is possible with Lego’.

Those sets can also be rather pricey – as are a number of other options on this list. But Lego’s recent Succulents set brings something a little more affordable.

It includes nine plants such as cacti and can be built in different arrangements for different display cases. It even has something of a ‘multiplayer’ mode, with three sets of instructions letting you simultaneously work on different parts of the build with friends and family.

Following on from Lego’s Nintendo Entertainment System set, with the Lego Atari 2600 the company’s designers have revisited one of the most important, influential pieces of gaming hardware yet ever released. The Lego Atari 2600 doesn’t deserve all the credit, but like so much from the Pong company, it left a profound legacy, while doing a hell of a lot of work to bring gaming into the mainstream.

And wow – the Lego version packs a lot in. There’s the console, with an opening section that pops out a tiny diorama of a gaming den from the era. Then you get three classic game carts, the machine’s beloved joystick controller, a cartridge rack, and a further trio of mini dioramas that represent the gameplay of each cartridge.

The Lego Atari 2600 sure doesn’t come at a pocket money price, but it absolutely brings value if you’re into classic consoles.

There are more mechanically elaborate Technic sets out there, but the Lego Technic Ferrari Daytona does an amazing job of combining looks normally best achieved through the Lego System, with the function and complexity Technic serves up. It would almost be a spoiler to detail the build process too much because Technic offers a voyage of discovery as you push parts together. But, if you like the sound of constructing a V12 engine with moving pistons, it might be time to get technical.

A very quick primer on ‘the other Lego system’ – Technic: some of you mature adults reading may remember the older generation of Technic, which made heavy use of studded Lego bricks with holes along their sides. You still see a few of those bricks in modern sets, but around 2000, Technic went ‘studless’, introducing a whole new family of elements and building opportunities.

It distanced Technic a little further from what is strictly called the ‘Lego System’, which all the other sets here use – but also allowed Lego designers and custom builders to create much more complex models with working gearboxes, authentic suspension geometry, and even Bluetooth motors to allow remote control.

If you’ve checked out our updated list of the most valuable Lego sets ever, you’ll know how much love there is for the classic 1970s and 1980s Lego ‘Space’ line – enough to make one such set worth a shade over $10,000. Too much for you? Try the recently released Lego Galaxy Explorer instead. While on paper it is part of the Lego Ideas theme, in the spirit it continues the Space theme. In fact, it’s a direct homage to the 1979 set also named Galaxy Explorer.

What you get in the box are the parts to build a fairly large starship precisely in the Space style. Its greatest accomplishment is how it blends classic Lego style with modern building techniques. The Galaxy Explorer is very much a current generation set in terms of quality and nuance, but it makes charming concessions to how Lego used to be, including the included robot that very much returns to the basic building methods of the past.

The Lego James Bond Aston Martin DB5 – a brick-made version of the most iconic, charming, and gadget-packed car in film history – is arguably the greatest toy vehicle to ever release. The car is just as you remember it from Goldfinger: revolving number plate, front-wing machine guns, ejector seat, and a six-cylinder engine under the hood.

Not only is it an authentic recreation of Bond’s Aston Martin, it’s an elegant model in its own right. A must for James Bond fans? Probably.

Such is the realism and style of the achingly vintage Lego Typewriter, that at a glance it can appear like the real thing. Typewriters might seem like an ancient relic to so many people today, but back in the early 1990s some of us were still using them occasionally to submit school work (you’re welcome to tell us we still look young at this point!). And coming from the era they did, they bring bags of style spoken in curved lines and glinting mechanisms.

Sure, the Lego Typewriter doesn’t actually work, but it comes bristling with smart mechanisms, and is perhaps a Technic set on the inside, and a Lego System set on the outside. It takes a piece of paper, hitting the keys makes the parts chatter away and the carriage slides across… and then you get to whack the carriage back to where it started, just like the real thing. It was based on the Lego founder’s own machine, and comes with a typed letter from the current CEO, for you to display with this most handsome set.

If Lego isn’t just for kids, Marvel definitely isn’t, so it should be no surprise that our list contains the Lego Infinity Gauntlet – perhaps those movies’ most iconic objects, recreated in brick form. Coveted by Thanos, and used to murder half the universe, you can now build this weapon of mass destruction yourself, and hang it around your home for all to see.

The detail is brilliant, but the gauntlet’s posable digits make it shine. Standing over a foot tall, the included stand makes it look something like a trophy; fitting for the most powerful glove in the universe.

Want some eye-catching Lego you can hang on your wall? The Lego Starry Night kit features great colors and unique block shapes. It beautifully captures the essence of Vincent Van Gogh’s masterpiece in Lego brick form. This 2,315-piece set will take you a while to construct, but once it’s complete you’ll be able to proudly display it for all to see.

The fact that this is a 3D reconstruction of a 2D painting is really clever, as elements like the trees and the stars literally pop out of the frame. It even comes complete with a little van Gogh minifigure painting the scene – a cute touch. Famous artwork seems like a rich, and previously untapped vein of Lego for adults that’s bound to see a lot of new builds in upcoming years, so stay tuned in case your favorite piece gets put in plastic.

I cannot be leaf how amazing the Lego Wildflowers Bouquet is. It’s simply iris-istible! This set is a part of the Lego Botanicals range for adults and Lego has certainly rose to the occasion.  Okay okay, that is enough of the flower puns. This set is perfect for adults who want to add both color and a touch of sustainability to their home.

Not only does this Lego set last forever– unlike flowers which sadly decay—but elements of this set are made from plant-based plastic made using sustainably sourced sugarcane. The instruction booklet is also digital which means we can save some trees.

This set is well worth the money. It contains 939 pieces and features eight different species of wildflowers inspired by cornflowers, lavender, Welsh poppies, cow parsley, leatherleaf ferns, gerbera daisies, larkspur, and lupins. In total the set comprises 16 individual stems which can be adjusted to different heights.

Although the stems vary in length, the ‘larkspur’ with a straight stem measures over 18 inches. If you want a bigger bouquet you can even purchase two of the same set or combine it with the Flower Bouquet set. So, enjoy some flower arranging! There is even a great article on the website which teaches you how to arrange your Lego flowers.

This set is not overly complex to build. It has been created with intricate Lego pieces, but overall the build is fun and relaxing. It’s such a fun idea and makes a great gift. Why not get a vase and fill it with small blue tiles to complete the look? We are over the bloom with this set!

Read our Lego Wildflower Bouquet review.

The Eiffel Tower is one of the most iconic landmarks and so it’s no surprise that Lego has created a set in its honor. Gustave Eiffel engineered the Eiffel Tower. Initially meant to be an attraction for the World’s Fair, it took 22 months to complete and is made up of 2,500,000 rivets, 7,300 tonnes of iron, and 60 tonnes of paint.

The Lego Eiffel Tower set is beautifully detailed with many intricacies. It’s a harder set to build so definitely offers a challenge as it has 10,001 pieces and measures 149 cm high, 57 cm wide, and 57 cm in depth. That’s nearly five feet tall! This set might seem pricey, but it’s massive and is the flagship model in the Lego Travel and History series.

The idea behind this set is to build it in a similar way to the real Eiffel Tower. This set is assembled in four sections. (Because it’s made up of four different sections, you can disassemble the set should you ever need to move it).

Just like the real tower it has three observation platforms, lifts with cabling, a broadcast tower, and Gustave Eiffel’s private office at the top. And again, just like the real thing, this set is made of a sound structure. This set will certainly transport you to the streets of Paris.

In a galaxy far far away, Luke Skywalker has returned in the form of Lego… When completed, this ultimate Lego set will offer a fantastic conversation starter for all Star Wars fanatics here in the galaxy. This set offers a marvelous project to unwind and is perfect for adults who are a fan of the franchise.

The Lego Emperor’s Throne Room diorama set offers the perfect piece of classic Star Wars memorabilia. For $99.99 (£89.99) it captures an exciting scene from The Return of The Jedi (1983) to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release.

This set depicts the final climax between Luke and two of the most notorious baddies in the series; Palpatine and Darth Vader. It pays attention to detail. Emperor Palpatine’s throne rotates. The Death Star window element is specially designed for this set and the two control panels are very exact to their onscreen counterparts.

It contains 807 pieces so is relatively compact and its finished product is fantastic. Perfect for a mantelpiece or display cabinet. It comes with three Lego Minifigures; Palpatine with two Sith lightning bolts and Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader with lightsabers. It also comes with a plaque featuring Luke’s iconic line “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

The Bugatti Chiron sports car combines suave design, ground-breaking technology, and speed. Like the real deal, the Lego Bugatti Chiron does all the above and is perfect for car-loving Lego fans looking for a challenge. This model is a 1:8 scale replica model.

Similar to the Ferrari above, this Lego set is a part of the more challenging Technic range. These sets usually contain complex mechanisms and this set is no different.

Spec-wise, this set has; an active rear wing, brake discs, a W16 engine with moving pistons, an 8-speed gearbox with a movable paddle gearstick, and spoked rims with low-profile tires. Its hood even opens up to reveal its very own unique serial number. You can even switch the active rear wing from handling to the top speed position using the top speed key.

This set is 3,599 pieces and measures 14 cm high, 56 cm long, and 32 cm wide. Unfortunately, this set is now retired but is still available on sites like Amazon. With all its detail and brilliance, you’ll want to hunt one down while you still can. It’s not just a car; it is a work of art as well.

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) brought the macabre side of Batman to the big screen and boy was it a hit! As a result, Lego decided to release a Lego Dark Knight Tumbler.

This set is perfect for adults who love Batman. Because it is a larger set containing 2,049 pieces, it also offers a challenge for the more experienced builder.

This set costs around $269.99 (£229.99), and includes two minifigures; Batman and Heath Ledger’s The Joker. There are two different Tumbler Lego sets on the market. One has been retired but can still be found on websites like Amazon, whereas the re-release can be found on the Lego website.

The main difference? Well, the initial set had some flaws, and the new set irons these out. The new set comes with a stand and the placard is much neater, and the outfit that the Joker is wearing. Both sets are reasonably priced for what you get, though.

Aesthetically, it looks very similar to its on-screen portrayal. It has removable roof panels to reveal a very detailed cockpit. Its wheels move. And it is designed in a way that the outside looks great without compromising the building experience.

Read the Batman Lego Tumbler review on our sister site.

The Lord of the Rings: Rivendell Lego effuses majesty, and as it’s recommended for ages 18+, we felt it deserved a place on our list. It’s the one Lego set to rule them all, and as it is such a big set– with a whopping 6,167 pieces– you may even get to watch the extended editions of the films as you build it!

Rivendell is currently one of the top 10 biggest sets, and it’s exclusive to the official Lego store. This set will transport you deep within the Rivendell forest, and while it’s one of the most expensive Lego sets for adults, it’s a real must-have for true Lord of the Rings fans.

It comes with 15 Minifigures including Frodo with the ring, Gimli, and Legolas. The foliage adds beautiful detail and color to the set. It features the iconic area where the council of Elrond discusses the threat of Mordor. You can even place the minifigures to recreate this particular scene. Paintings and statues adorn the set to add a touch of history to Middle- Earth.

This set is made up of three sections; the council ring, the tower, the bridge, and the river and gazebo. Each segment can be displayed separately but when combined is 39 cm high, 72 cm wide, and 30 cm deep. This set is certainly precious.