
Happy New Year! After a gruelling week of votes in the Best LEGO Set of 2021 tournament… it’s finally time to reveal the winner of the tournament!
First off, a massive thank you to everyone who put in the nominations, and voted in any of the rounds, whether on Facebook or Instagram!
This year, a total of 13,124 votes were cast throughout the tournament, an increase of about 49% on the number of votes cast year!
Update: To check out my personal Top 10 sets of LEGO 2021, check out the Power Rankings 2021 post!

Here’s a quick of the Grand Final, where we had a repeat of 2020’s final round, with two LEGO Ideas set going head to head for the crown.
Last year’s Grand Final was much, much tighter, with the winner edging out by a mere 5 votes, but this year, the winner had an overwhelming margin of victory of 6.02%!
That said, the polls I ran for the Grand Final differed quite differently, with Instagram picking a different winner compared to Facebook, but Facebook’s vote had a much more commanding win, which sealed the contest.
Without further ado… announcing the winner of the Best Set of 2021 Vote…

Congratulations to 21325 Medieval Blacksmith for winning the Reader Vote, cementing it as the best set of 2021, as voted by Jay’s Brick Blog readers!
The Medieval Blacksmith netted 431 total votes, against Home Alone’s 382 votes!

Here’s a look at the final bracket!
The Medieval Blacksmith is a well-deserved winner, and one of my chief regrets of 2021 is not building mine, so in recognition of this win, I’ll make a commitment to build and review the set by the first quarter of 2022!
Data and Interesting Finds

This year’s bracket had very few surprises, with the Medieval Blacksmith having a pretty straight forward path to victory.
There weren’t any really close battles, but I did different patterns in how Instagram voted vs Facebook, which I think tells me something about the type of LEGO fan that frequents either platform.
Best LEGO Set of 2021 – Seeding (visual)

Here’s a visual representation of how the sets were seeded based on position – the Medieval Blacksmith being the Top Seed, and winning the bracket was almost expected, but props to Home Alone for (slightly) overperforming!
Best LEGO Set of 2021 – Seeding Round Votes

The most interesting bit of data for me, and indicative of what my readers think is the best LEGO set of 2021, is when you look at the absolute count of votes.
As you can see the Medieval Blacksmith overwhelmingly beat out Ninjago City Gardens in the number of votes received, with Home Alone, Hogwarts Icons, UCS AT-AT, and Titanic bunched together.
Looking at the bracket, I think the round that made the biggest impact was Round 2, where the Daily Bugle claimed the upset, knocking Ninjago City Gardens out thanks to a wider-than expected margin of victory coming from Instagram.

Another big surprise for me, was just how strongly Home Alone performed during the tournament, demonstrating just how beloved the set it to fans. Or maybe it was Christmas and people were feeling festive, or there’s some recency bias at play.
In conclusion, another fantastic year for LEGO Ideas, and if not for the bracket seeding where the Typewriter went up against the Blacksmith, I think it wouldn’t be surprising to see 3 out of 4 semi-finalists being LEGO Ideas sets!
Thank you again to everyone who voted! I’ll be sharing my Top 10 sets of 2021 soon, as well as some more pieces as we look back at 2021 and the year that was.
Don’t forget, over 100 new LEGO sets are out now that we’ve crossed over to 2022, including the new Boutique Hotel modular building, so check out all the new sets you can get excited about!
2021 was a fantastic year for LEGO, especially for adults, and I can’t wait to see how 2022 pans out!
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I have virtually all of them except for the $800 chunk of gray plastic(and the rainbow nonsense). Titanic is epic and Blacksmith is beautiful, but down, Ninjago City Gardens by a mile.
Most popular set of 2021, not best set. The Titanic set should be number one hands down. One of the most beautiful LEGO sets ever.
I’ll make the same comment I’ve been making all year – nowhere near enough love for Ninjago City Gardens on here ;). Medieval Blacksmith a worthy winner though…
Nice website for Lego fans.
Congrats and happy new year 2022
I was in Orlando this August, and the Everyone Is Awesome kits were just one of the pieces of unsold rainbow-colored LGBTQ-pandering merchandise that had been piling up at the different parks since Pride month ended. Even if it has the best of intentions, it’s unimaginative and simplistic and shouldn’t be on any best-of lists. The Fawkes set from Harry Potter should have been on there instead.
I surely have Fawkes, but not that completely UNawesome set… If I needed 80% of the bricks of that set for a project, I’d bricklink it at thrice the price. (A
I also have every other set on the list but AT-AT)
I think the lgbtq should be dead last at 16th place and then the Harry Potter sets
What is set 8004?
Happy New Year!
My choice was eliminated in the first round, as to be expected for a ship which sank on her maiden voyage!
I’d be very interested to see if these results are reflected in sales figures.
Thanks for all the great coverage this year, Jay.
Cheers
Roger
I’m shocked at the popularity of the Home Alone set, the movie was good, but the architecture is just awful and quite ugly, although not quite as hideous as the last modular set, that thing looks like something desperate to emulate old architecture and failing miserably. . But people like what they like I suppose.
Medieval and At-AT are my top sets (along with Winnie the Pooh).
Same here! But I saw Home Alone all over social media in December, and it has been sold out since launch, so there’s definitely tons of people who aren’t your hardcore AFOLs that love the set/movie.
Your top sets sound like mine!
W
I just wanted to say YAAAAAAAASSSSS! Once more lol!
Excellent Jay. Excellent job. Loved all the facts numbers and info you gave.
Woohooo! I love digging through the data, and you know what – glad my readers have excellent taste in LEGO!
YAAAAAAASSSSSSS!!!! I told you!!!! And I couldn’t be more proud of everyone who voted! Hands down the BEST SET OF THE YEAR!!!!