Once again, I leave Brickworld feeling more inspired than ever. This time however I am inspired beyond just building Lego. Often at conventions I get plenty of pictures and always look forward to building with new techniques or ideas I picked up. That certainly was still the case at Brickworld Chicago 2026, but this time I felt I picked up a whole lot more. Not only did I make a ton of new friends this year, but I had such a wonderful time learning about the Lego community beyond just building. It was wild to me to chat with others as if I had known them for years even if I was meeting them for the first time. The motivation I gained from this convention was unbelievable; I was even motivated to pick up blog writing again! Seeing as how this is my first convention write up, I am not quite sure where to take it, so I suppose I will just ramble on recapping my favorite events and interactions from the week.
I arrived slightly late on Thursday afternoon, and immediately upon entering I remembered how great it was to be at a Lego convention again. Within the first 30 minutes at the convention (and lunch immediately after) I already got the chance to meet a ton of new faces, all of whom were such great people! A sad low-light of Thursday was not being able to participate in the Rocking Plants set draft due to every nearby store being sold out, I’ll just have to get that fancy new ring part another time. Everything works out though because due to missing that I was able to set up most of my MOCs with relative ease. I surprised even myself with my packing ability as none of my MOCs took more than about 20 minutes to setup, a real miracle. That said teardown for some of the more complicated builds ended up being super scuffed, so I think I must focus more on making my builds easier to travel with in the future! After a quiet Thursday dinner, I was able to make it back in time for some games. This year’s activities included a scavenger hunt which I tagged alongside world famous Lego Master Ben Brickson to complete. In the end, we just ended up shining a black light on everyone’s builds, oh well. Along the way however we had some hilarious moments, including meeting the creator of one of my favorite builds in the hall, “Thursday”, as pictured below.
I also got to go gambling at the frog lottery and was lucky enough to win 30 black frogs thanks to Dave, so I walked away from the evening of activities a real winner. As Thursday wound down, I got the chance to set up my last build, the Donut Dragon. This was the biggest pain of any of my MOCs to setup as expected, but with a little help from Aiden, it didn’t go too poorly. I had also spent the previous day fixing a new stand for the build with parts provided partially by Peter’s Pieces, so I was feeling pretty good about the build!
Friday ended up being a day full of tacos for me, seeing as how I had lunch and dinner at the taco truck outside and got the same thing for both meals. While I’m not sure how relevant of a detail that was, it was nice to connect with builders like Owen, Dan, Eann, Noah, and Aiden over some food at various meals. Times like these were when I really opened to talking about more than just Lego, which always makes me feel like the friends I have made at conventions are even more valuable!
Speaking of valuable, Aiden’s valuable Lego collection drove me broke on Friday as I just kept buying parts off him. If you are looking for a good deal on very usable parts at a Lego convention, find the guy, or not if you want to keep your wallet alive. The good deals were flowing on Friday, although not particularly at the garage sale, which I mostly skipped in favor of chatting with Markus, a great learning opportunity! I did realize I had a Bricklink order to pick at the garage sale however, so I ended up going and poaching a few other deals whilst I was there. I also spent Friday finalizing my setup for the public days, which included setting up one more build I hadn’t planned on displaying.
I want to shout out Eann and Marc for the encouragement to set this build up at the Builder Improvement Initiative (BII) table, as it definitely wouldn’t have come out without their support. It is a MOC I have worked on for over a year and just never liked, so even though I “finished” it, it won’t be seeing the light of the internet (or my photobox for that matter). That said, I was happy seeing it on display and it made me proud to see another completed build the public could view.
I spent Friday night running around the convention hall. Firstly, to do a full convention tour with Aiden, and secondly with Marc who was handing out award nominee flags. Although I didn’t receive any this year, I was incredibly impressed by those that did, especially my friends who did incredibly well this year (there was so many of them)!!! With another very late night in the books, I had to gear up for the public days about to take place on the weekend…
Public days aren’t really why I go to conventions so if you wanted to see me but never saw me at my table, sorry! That said, Saturday was a day full of fun with the UIUC Lego club. It was great to get to see so many friends from school again for one last time before I move up to Canada, including those who graduated in past years. I can’t stress enough if you go to UIUC and have even the slightest interest in Lego, join the club. I had one interruption Saturday for a set draft of the Horizon Adventures set with some talented builders. As a quick note, don’t do set drafts with extremely talented builders, they take all the good parts… Returning to the convention hall, it was incredibly fun to tour the hall with my friends from school and see all the amazing builds. We had a great club dinner as well joined by a few friends of the club (Eann, Dan, Matt, and Noah I’m looking at y’all) which was just a blast. Personally, I spent a large part of the dinner talking Dan’s ear off about Lego which very much is my idea of a good time, so hopefully it is for other people too though I’m not sure…
Post dinner Saturday included some awesome things, the coolest of which was the film festival! This was my first time attending the film festival but wow it was very enjoyable. If you attend Brickworld Chicago in the future I highly recommend going, there’s a lot of talent in that area that is amazing to see. Saturday night also had the world of lights which is always lovely to see. I have never messed with putting lights in my builds but there certainly are people who make incredible use of them. Most impressive was the large Halo collab being all lit up, the whole group killed it! In an already busy day, the night kept going with more shenanigans, including watching a hot dog roll on an escalator. My last action of the night was to again follow Marc around the convention hall while he handed out awards. This time however I got to watch Marc absolutely demolish Evan in 7 rounds in the boxing ring, Simon you got to raise your fighter better next time…
Seeing as how Sunday was another public day with less UIUC attendance, I left this time with Aiden to go climbing. Even though I climbed absolutely terribly, it was cool to get mogged by Aiden’s superior strength all morning and wonder why he was better than me at something other than MOC building too. We hammered down some lunch after and returned to the convention hall around 2 which gave me the chance to do some final rounds with my friends. Sunday always feels like such a rushed day, I didn’t even get the chance to finish my chess game with Eann using the fantastically designed set by Eann, Evan, and Geneva. As soon as 3 o’clock hit, teardown was in full flow. Since we were in a rush to drop someone off at the airport, my teardown was hilarious and I will most certainly pay the price when I try to set any one of these builds up again. I left the convention in a rush even missing the closing ceremonies so if I didn’t get to say bye to you, sorry!
To wrap this blog up I should say I have no idea if this is enjoyable content to read about, but if you enjoyed reading (or even just managed to read this whole thing) please send me a message and let me know. I could be convinced to write about previous years conventions if the appeal is there! I want to close out by saying thank you to all the great people I got the chance to talk to who I will attempt to list below, but if I forget anyone’s name, sorry!
bjk__creations (Brandon)
_brickbytes (Owen)
Aiden.Builds (Aiden)
DanTheFan (Dan)
Miscellanabuilds (Eann)
Mbricks (Marc)
JimBaggins (Isaiah)
chezpoof_builds (Matt)
h2brick (Noah)
building_connections_official (Noah)
si_mocs (Simon)
moriatrus (Markus)
iterative_bricks (Evan)
ben_brickson (Ben)
Carter Witz (Carter)
Jako of Nerogue (Joel)
Bricks Made Simple (Grant)
lego_remat (Andrew)
bigboibricks (Josh)