According to the CEO of The Lego Group, the company may begin developing some video games internally. Niels Christiansen, who has been Lego’s CEO since 2017, said in an interview that the company is ramping up to make some games in-house.
“We can definitely say as long as we’re under the Lego brand we can cover experiences for kids of all ages, digital or physical. [Games development in-house] is something we’re building up,” he said in an interview with FT.
Many of the existing Lego games are made by external studios via a licensing arrangement. For example, Lego works with the UK studio TT Games on the popular Lego games based on brands like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Lego is also in business with Epic Games for the Lego Fortnite game inside the Fortnite platform. Additionally, Lego partnered with 2K for a racing game, 2023’s Lego 2K Drive. According to VGC, this was the first in a series of sports games to come from this deal.
Reporter Jason Schreier said TT Games is now developing a new Lego game that could potentially release later in 2025 or in 2026. VGC reported that an upcoming Lego Harry Potter game may be in the works and could follow a similar format to Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga and cover the entire Harry Potter series. 2024’s Lego Harry Potter Collection already did this, with the bundle comprising Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4 and Lego Harry Potter Years 5-7. Warner Bros. Games is making major changes going forward and will focus only on a few core franchises, Harry Potter being one of them.
Another new release in the Lego game series was 2024’s Lego Horizon Adventures, which adapted the events of Sony’s Horizon series. Guerrilla Games and Studio Gobo developed this title.
There is basically nothing to go on beyond Christiansen’s single-sentence quote about potentially making games in-house, so it’s not clear why the company might make this change, when it could happen, or if anything will change with Lego’s ongoing business partnerships with outside studios.