When Do LEGO Advent Calendars Come Out in the UK? 2026 Release Date, Prices and Whether They're Worth It

Sally Holmes
Aug 15
6 min read

All five LEGO® Advent Calendars for 2026 go on sale in the UK on 1 September 2026, priced between £22.99 and £29.99. Pre-orders are open on LEGO.com now, with a purchase limit of three per household. The lineup is Star Wars (75456), Marvel (76340), Disney Princess (43298), City (60510) and Friends (42698) — and for the first time in years, there is no Harry Potter Advent Calendar. Here is every UK price, piece count and age rating, the price-per-piece maths, and an honest answer on whether they're worth the money.

When exactly do LEGO Advent Calendars come out in the UK?

1 September 2026, and it applies to all five calendars at once. LEGO.com GB is taking pre-orders today, but every listing carries the same note — dispatched from 1 September — rather than shipping immediately. LEGO has also capped orders at three per household across the range, which it does to limit bulk-buying and resale.

Supermarkets and high street toy shops usually get stock a little later than LEGO.com. Worth knowing: LEGO doesn't discount seasonal sets on its own site during the selling window, so any saving you find will come from a third-party retailer — and that's a gamble on your preferred theme still being on the shelf when the discount appears.

Every 2026 LEGO Advent Calendar: UK prices, piece counts and ages

LEGO Star Wars Advent Calendar 2026 (75456) — £29.99, 293 pieces, ages 6+, 10.2p per piece. The Mandalorian is the theme this year. You get Mandalorian and Moff Gideon minifigures plus Grogu and a Pit Droid figure in holiday outfits, with Carson Teva, a Jawa and IG-11 also in the box. Mando and Grogu wear complementary festive jumpers — Grogu's has Mando on it, Mando's has Grogu. There are seven mini-build vehicles: Mando's N-1 Starfighter, the Razor Crest, a speeder bike, a Sandcrawler, an Outland TIE Fighter, an Imperial Light Cruiser and an X-wing in festive colours. Add Mudhorn, Bantha, Dewback and Blurrg figures, a weapons rack, a Mandalorian gauntlet and Grogu's hoverpram. It is the priciest of the five per brick, but also the most densely packed with recognisable characters.

LEGO Marvel Advent Calendar 2026 (76340) — £29.99, 317 pieces, ages 6+, 9.5p per piece. The biggest piece count of the five and six minifigures: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Dr. Doom, Ghost Spider, Captain America and Wolverine, all with festive touches. The builds lean properly silly in a good way — Iron Man's present-wrapping robot, a Dr. Doom helicopter, a Helicarrier, an X-Jet sleigh, a snowball cannon and a Christmas tree built out of green Wolverine claws. If you're judging on what you physically get for the money, this is the strongest box in the range.

LEGO City Advent Calendar 2026 (60510) — £22.99, 252 pieces, ages 5+, 9.1p per piece. The cheapest per brick of the whole lineup, and comfortably the most Christmassy: Santa, a Mrs Claus figure, three elves, a snowman and a baby reindeer. The box folds out into a Santa's workshop playmat, and every mini-build has its instructions printed inside its own calendar window, so a five-year-old can genuinely do it without an adult reading a booklet over their shoulder. If this is someone's first LEGO advent calendar, this is the one.

LEGO Disney Princess Advent Calendar 2026 (43298) — £29.99, 290 pieces, ages 5+, 10.3p per piece. Listings describe micro-dolls of Ariel, Cinderella, Moana and Mulan alongside Gus, Mushu, Pua and Sebastian. The micro-doll format is a deliberate trade-off: it lets LEGO fit far more characters behind the doors than the larger mini-doll format would allow.

LEGO Friends Advent Calendar 2026 (42698) — £22.99, 211 pieces, ages 6+, 10.9p per piece. The smallest box and the dearest per brick. It also very nearly didn't exist: it was missing from the initial 2026 reveal entirely and only surfaced separately weeks later, which caused a fair amount of panic among Friends fans at the time.

Why is there no Harry Potter LEGO Advent Calendar in 2026?

LEGO hasn't given a public reason. What we can say factually is that the Harry Potter calendar — a fixture of the range for years — is simply absent from the 2026 lineup, and it isn't the only casualty. The Minecraft calendar that appeared in 2025 hasn't returned, and there's no NINJAGO calendar either, despite the theme hitting its 15th anniversary this year. LEGO has gone from a sprawling advent range to five boxes.

One thing worth being clear on, because it's causing confusion: the Harry Potter theme itself is not being wound down. LEGO launched the 3,491-piece Ministry of Magic Collectors' Edition (76476) at £389.99 this summer, and the annual Back to Hogwarts promotion is running on LEGO.com right now. It's the advent calendar specifically that's gone, not the theme. If a Harry Potter calendar was a December tradition in your house — and judging by the reaction across LEGO fan sites, for a lot of families it was — 2026 is the year to plan a replacement rather than wait for a restock that isn't coming.

Are LEGO Advent Calendars actually worth the money?

On raw price-per-piece, the five 2026 calendars run from 9.1p to 10.9p a brick, averaging almost exactly 10p. Buy all five and you're spending £135.95 for 1,363 pieces. For comparison, the 1,673-piece LEGO Icons Jaguar E-Type (11381) released this summer at £129.99 works out at 7.8p per piece.

But that comparison flatters the big set, and it's worth understanding why. Price-per-piece always falls as sets get larger, because the box, the instructions, the printing and the shipping cost roughly the same whether there are 250 bricks inside or 2,500. Small LEGO sets are always dearer per brick. Judged against other sets in the £20–£30 bracket rather than against 1,600-piece display models, advent calendars are priced fairly normally.

The stronger value argument is the minifigures. The Marvel calendar contains six of them at £29.99, which is £5 a figure before you count a single one of the 317 bricks. The Star Wars calendar bundles four minifigures plus Grogu, a Pit Droid and IG-11 in holiday variants that won't appear in any other set this year. If those are figures you'd have bought anyway, the calendar is the cheapest route to them.

The honest counter-argument is what happens on 27 December. You're buying 24 small builds designed to be opened once, and a fortnight later most of them are loose bricks in a tub. Whether £29.99 is well spent comes down to whether you're paying for the models or for the daily ritual — and for most families it's the ritual, which is a perfectly good reason to buy something.

One easy saving people miss: LEGO Insiders points. The £29.99 calendars each earn 240 points and the £22.99 ones earn 184. Insiders membership is free, so if you're buying anyway, make sure you're logged in when you do it.

Should you pre-order now or wait for a discount?

The three-per-household limit is the clearest signal LEGO expects demand. Beyond that, it depends on how attached you are to a specific box.

Pre-order now if you want a particular theme, especially Star Wars or Marvel — those are the two most likely to be bought as gifts by people who aren't otherwise LEGO buyers. Wait if you're flexible: the calendars still sitting on shelves in November tend to be the ones you'd have been happy with anyway, and third-party retailers sometimes trim the price as December approaches. What you shouldn't do is leave it to late November and still expect a choice of five.

Which 2026 LEGO Advent Calendar suits which age?

City (60510) and Disney Princess (43298) are the two rated 5+. City is the pick for a first advent calendar: it's the cheapest, it's the most straightforwardly festive, and the printed-in-the-window instructions mean a young builder can work independently. Disney Princess suits a child already attached to those characters — the micro-doll format means more faces, smaller builds.

Star Wars, Marvel and Friends are all rated 6+. Marvel is the best all-rounder for a confident builder — most pieces, most minifigures, most variety. Star Wars is the one for a household already into The Mandalorian, since the mini-builds fold straight into an existing LEGO Star Wars collection. Friends, at 211 pieces, is the smallest and is squarely aimed at fans of that theme rather than being a safe general choice.

A final thought. An advent calendar is £23–£30 for 24 days, after which the bricks join the pile — and the bigger question for most parents is what their child actually builds for the other eleven months. That's the gap we exist to fill: LendABrick plans start at £9.49 a month, cheaper than any other UK LEGO rental service we've found, with free Royal Mail Tracked 48 delivery and no rush to send anything back — keep a set as long as you're enjoying it. Buy the calendar for the December ritual; rent the big sets for the rest of the year.

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