Lego Keeps Going: Record First-Half Sales, Up 22 Percent
Our Chapter 4 opener leaves Lego in a good place: a company that dug out of a $300 million loss in 2004 by getting serious about segmentation. Here is the update. It is still working. Lego reported record sales for the first half of 2026, with consumer sales up 22 percent, in “Lego Sales Growth Outpaces Global Toy Market to Hit New Record” (The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2026).
The numbers are strong across the board. Revenue grew 21 percent to 41.9 billion Danish kroner ($6.54 billion). Net profit rose 32 percent to 8.6 billion kroner. The company launched more than 330 new products in six months and now operates 1,106 branded stores. Lego gained share in a toy market that is itself growing, with Mattel and Hasbro both posting strong quarters.
What drove the growth reads like a segmentation roster. Botanicals and Icons go to adults who want something to build on a Sunday afternoon, Speed Champions and a Formula 1 partnership go to motorsport fans, and Technic goes to the engineering-minded kid. Then there is Star Wars, still, alongside FIFA World Cup 2026 and KPop Demon Hunters, aimed at audiences Lego was not serving five years ago. CEO Niels B. Christiansen credited “culturally relevant brand experiences” for the demand, which is a polite way of saying that Lego keeps finding groups of people who want a specific thing and then building the specific thing.
There is something to argue about here too. Expenses also rose 21 percent, and a good deal of the growth rides on licensed intellectual property Lego does not own. The 2004 turnaround was built on the brick and the system of play. How much of 2026 is built on somebody else’s movie? Lego’s own answer is the new Smart Play line, with bricks and figures that move, light up, and make sound, plus a factory in Virginia due to open in 2027.
Twenty-two years after the year it nearly went under, the strategy in our opener is still the strategy.
Claude was used to write a first draft of this blog post.