Boarding Now: LEGO Takes Flight at San Diego Comic-Con 2026
/Today’s guest article comes from Chris Castagnetto who shares his experience visiting San Diego Comic-Con.
San Diego Comic-Con 2026 has come and gone, and once again LEGO showed up with a booth experience unlike anything we’ve seen from them before. As a longtime Comic-Con attendee and someone who has watched LEGO’s presence evolve year over year—from build-heavy activations to community-driven displays to last year’s open, low-stress layout—I can say with confidence that 2026 was a completely different animal.
This year, LEGO didn’t build a booth. They built an airport.
Welcome Aboard: The Travel-Themed Booth
This year LEGO decided to forgo the traditional build tables and hands-on construction zones we’ve come to expect from LEGO’s Comic-Con footprint. In their place was a booth built entirely around photo opportunities.
The first stop was the greeting area, where booth staff were dressed as flight attendants, fully committing to the “you are now traveling” bit. They handed out flyers detailing the weekend’s schedule and, at select times, gave away posters to fans passing through.
LEGO also ran two separate autograph sessions here, both centered on Ninjago, giving fans the chance to meet the show's voice actors and creators, get photos, and ask questions face-to-face. It’s always a highlight seeing fans get that kind of direct access to the people behind the characters they grew up with.
Destination One: Mos Eisley Cantina
On one side of the booth, fans could “travel” to Tatooine and step into a full recreation of the LEGO Star Wars 75425 Mos Eisley Cantina Smart Brick set built at one-to-one scale.
After waiting in line, guests were able to participate in photo opportunities inside the cantina, essentially letting them stand alongside the LEGO version of the set.
Destination Two: The Pokémon Zone
The other side of the booth sent fans through a life-size Pokémon experience built around the LEGO Pokémon sets. Guests could pose for photos with towering recreations of Pikachu and Eevee, again at one-to-one scale, making for some of the most shared photo ops of the whole show.
It was hard not to stop and snap a picture whether you were a die-hard Pokémon fan or just wandering by. They also showcased all of the newest Pokémon Smart Brick sets, showing the vast amount of characters that are being brought to life in this wave of sets.
The Reveal Zone
Tucked in the back of the booth was where things got exciting with all of LEGO’s big Comic-Con reveals, and there were plenty: new Ninjago sets, a new Donkey Kong arcade box, and the newly announced Shrek Collectible Minifigures line, among other announcements.
Beyond the reveals, this back area also doubled as a general showcase, with sets pulled from across nearly every major LEGO theme on display, so no matter what corner of the hobby you’re into, there was something here worth a look.
Ninjago 15 Anniversary Panel
The Ninjago panel itself was one of the most emotional the franchise has hosted, marking the show’s 15th anniversary with a sizzle reel, a tribute to the late Kirby Morrow, and a genuinely moving reflection from the cast on how far the series has come.
The team also came bearing news: “Dragons Rising” Season 4 Part 2 is set to land in September, and the show’s entire five-year “Dragons Rising” arc will wrap up in 2027 with a special event called “Dragon’s Fury.” On top of that, a new “Ninjago Legends: Duskfall,” was announced for the fall, and a spinner toy set harkening back to the franchise’s earliest days is coming in 2027.
The cast even performed a Comic-Con-exclusive canon short story live on stage, bridging the gap between the two halves of Season 4 which you can enjoy embedded here and on TikTok.
Between the tribute, the reveals, and a fan Q&A that touched on everything from Lloyd's arc to a potential Dareth-themed amusement park following that fan giving a Dareth mini-fig to the creators in Comic-Con tradition, it was a fitting way to celebrate 15 years of Ninjago.
A Different Kind of LEGO Booth
If you’ve followed our past few years of Comic-Con coverage, you know LEGO’s booth has traditionally leaned hard into play with build stations, hands-on activities, and something for fans to actually construct. This year marked a real departure from that. The focus was instead on photo ops. Every section of the booth was designed around a moment you could capture and share rather than a set you could piece together yourself.
For the social-media crowd, it was a great fit. The one-to-one scale recreations are genuinely impressive, and the travel concept gave the whole booth a cohesive, thought-out identity. But for the builders in the audience—the fans who show up wanting to get their hands on bricks and see new pieces up close—this year's booth left a little to be desired.
This year’s offerings were a very different experience than what LEGO has traditionally offered at this show, and depending on what you come to Comic-Con looking for, your mileage may vary.
Behind the Scenes: A Conversation with LEGO's Gianna Carrozza
While at the show, we caught up with Gianna Carrozza, a PR and Brand Marketing Coordinator for the LEGO Group, to talk about the thinking behind this year’s booth direction.
Carrozza explained that the travel-and-photo-op concept was rooted in LEGO’s push behind Smart Play, which she called the brand’s biggest launch since the minifigure debuted in the 1970s. Since the platform’s January debut, the team wanted a way to bring it to San Diego that felt different from how it had been showcased over the previous several months, while staying true to the creativity and originality Comic-Con booths are known for. Rather than hands-on building, the goal was to recreate iconic sets at scale and let fans step directly into their fandoms, using the booth to demonstrate how Smart Play actually functions within the sets.
She described the fan reaction as overwhelmingly positive, pointing to the experience of standing inside the full-scale Mos Eisley Cantina recreation as a standout moment for guests. She also noted how many fans came dressed to theme, spanning Star Wars, Pokémon, adult collectors, and families alike, and said the team felt genuinely supported by the community throughout the weekend.
On the Ninjago side, Carrozza pointed to the show’s 15th anniversary in 2026 as the driving force behind the franchise’s bigger-than-usual presence this year, including the cast and creator panel and the two autograph signings. She talked about the personal nature of watching fans compare current products to older iterations of the line, and the full-circle moment of watching kids who grew up with Ninjago now introducing it to their own kids at the booth.
Overall, after several years of LEGO trying different approaches at Comic-Con, 2026 felt like another experiment in what the booth can be. I may have missed the hands-on building of previous years, but there’s no denying the scale and spectacle LEGO brought to the show. Whether this travel-themed approach was a one-year detour or a sign of where LEGO’s Comic-Con presence is headed next, I’m already curious to see where they take us in 2027.
What did you think of LEGO's travel-themed approach to Comic-Con this year? Was it a fun evolution or do you miss the hands-on build stations of years past? Let us know in the comments below.
Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Lukas Kurth from StoneWars, Wayne Tyler, Dan Church, Roxanne Baxter, and Marci Hollingsworth to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.
