A brief history of MEGA’s Pokémon sets, and the challenge facing LEGO in 2026

The LEGO Group has captured the Pokémon licence from MEGA, but Mattel’s extensive back catalogue poses challenges for the Danish brand in 2026.

Mattel has confirmed on Instagram that it will ‘no longer be supplying Pokémon products’ as of December 2025, paving the way for the LEGO Group to debut its own Pokémon sets in 2026. What’s unusual about this scenario is that LEGO as a brand has rarely plucked a licence from the hands of a rival manufacturer, and therefore has rarely been second to the party – especially for a property as big as Pokémon.

But that’s exactly the challenge it’s facing here, because MEGA has covered almost every base imaginable with its extensive Pokémon product range since 2017. Roughly 130 different Pokémon have featured across 150 or so sets in the past eight years, at a variety of different scales, sizes and price points – many of which marry up with where you’d imagine the LEGO Group might take its own LEGO Pokémon range in 2026.

If you’re not familiar with MEGA’s Pokémon portfolio, here’s a quick recap of everything it’s cooked up since 2017...

Poké Ball Series

The LEGO Group is far from the only company to come up with multiple series of collectible characters, and just as you’d imagine it would seize the chance to launch a range of pocket money-priced Pokémon in 2026, so too has MEGA been doing just that. A total of 21 numbered series of Poké Balls have arrived on shelves since 2017, along with three bonus series featuring first-generation and all-time favourite characters.

Each of these sets includes a buildable Poké Ball and a small Pokémon, typically comprised of just a few pieces. From MEGA’s perspective, it’s been a quick way to cover dozens of different Pokémon – but has also required many unique pieces, recolours and unusual elements, which may be beyond the LEGO Group’s budget for its own Pokémon range. Still, it has precedent with the Super Mario collectible packs…

Single, versus and multipack sets

The bread and butter of MEGA’s Pokémon range has long been its core product line-up of single characters, versus sets and multipacks, all of which cover a variety of different Pokémon with various portions of terrain or scenery. Some include functions while others are just the Pokémon in question with zero side builds, but the long and short of it is that these are easily something you could see the LEGO Group trying for its mid-range playsets.

They’re perhaps closest in approach and style to LEGO Super Mario’s buildable characters, and if the LEGO Group chooses to sideline minifigures here as it has with Nintendo’s biggest mascot, it’s very likely that we’ll see buildable Pokémon at the same scale as MEGA’s core range.

Dioramas

‘Diorama’ has become synonymous with black bases and printed quote tiles in Billund, but for MEGA it’s simply been a way to categorise playsets that feature more scenery alongside its buildable Pokémon. These sets generally fall into the same scale as the single, versus and multipack models above, but would occupy higher price points in a wave of LEGO Pokémon sets.

Jumbo and Build & Show sets

MEGA has always been happy to experiment with producing Pokémon at different scales, and we’ve seen the LEGO Group take the same approach with plenty of its own licensed themes (a recent example being Simba arriving at two completely different sizes and price points on the same day in 2024). Here, then, is the perfect template for larger buildable Pokémon that would stray further into display territory than play.

The Jumbo sets have covered the most iconic Pokémon and paraphernalia (think Poké Balls) on a bigger scale, while the Build & Show sets are slightly smaller and still incorporate a degree of playability or functionality. It’s tough to imagine the LEGO Group skewering all of these scales and approaches at once, but with enough time we could see it happen.

Motion sets

MEGA’s flagship Pokémon collection – and the one that’s likely caught your eye on toy store shelves while you’ve been checking out the LEGO – is its motion builds, which include brick-built Pokémon on display bases that incorporate mechanisms to simulate movement. It’s the sort of thing LEGO fans have been doing with custom builds for years, but which we’ve rarely if ever seen in official LEGO sets.

This could therefore be one area in which MEGA has actually gone one step further than the LEGO Group is prepared to do, while there may be more than a few eyebrows raised if this is the space in which it finally decides to tackle motion-based builds given MEGA’s history…

Pixel Art sets

The LEGO Group may have broached the idea of brick-built mosaics first, but Mattel pumped out four pixel art Pokémon sets in 2024 – ensuring that even if we do see LEGO Art dip its toes into the Poké-pool in 2026 and beyond, it won’t be the first time we’ve seen this approach. LEGO Art is always keen to surprise us with new and radical sets, though…

Collector sets

Given Pokémon is turning 30 years old in 2026 (how the LEGO Group loves an anniversary), there’s a built-in audience of adult fans ready to bite the bullet on whatever LEGO Pokémon sets come our way. That makes an 18+ LEGO model all but certain – yet even here MEGA has led the way, debuting a 1,576-piece statue of Ash and Pikachu in May 2024.

This set was also designed to cater to an older audience, and it’s exactly the type of model you’d imagine the LEGO Group would release in a black box with an 18+ label, just like LEGO Fortnite’s 77072 Peely Bone.

Miscellaneous sets

This last batch of sets mainly covers seasonal products, but even here MEGA has capitalised on a mainstay of the LEGO Christmas portfolio: the advent calendar. A Pokémon Holiday Calendar debuted on shelves in 2020 and 2021, the latter featuring two Pokémon characters and 20 additional mini-builds with vague relevance to the theme.

The LEGO Group is already said to be mixing up its advent calendar range with a Minecraft version in 2025, so who’s to say we couldn’t see a LEGO Pokémon advent calendar in 2026?

But with all those products in mind, from Poké Balls to giant buildable characters, the real question we’re left with is: where does the LEGO Group go from here? Short of minifigure-scale sets that require dozens of one-off elements for Pokémon, perhaps in the same scale as Jurassic World’s tiny baby dinosaurs, MEGA’s sets have already covered almost everything you’d expect from a LEGO Pokémon range.

This isn’t to say that the LEGO Group couldn’t make a better go of the same approach, and there’s every chance it will try some of the same sorts of sets in 2026. It’s just an unusual position for the company to be in given it otherwise traditionally leads the pack among construction toys. Other brands are adding to (for example) the modular building format or Speed Champions’ eight-wide cars, but those ideas began in Billund.

That ethos of innovation has also underpinned previous collaborations between the LEGO Group and Nintendo, particularly in LEGO Super Mario. And it’s fair to say nobody saw that line of interactive buildable courses coming back in 2020, so while it may be more difficult for the LEGO Group to innovate for Pokémon, you’d be daft to write off the designers altogether.

The LEGO Group has yet to confirm any details of its own Pokémon range beyond the fact it’s coming in 2026, but watch this space for more in the weeks and months ahead.

Read next…

Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO using our affiliate links. Thanks!