Lego will let you — yes, you — compete to design a limited-edition Lego set

Do you want to be a Lego designer? You can compete to be one of up to five unofficial sets that Lego will officially produce if you create an original Lego set and submit it here. Designers get 5 percent of the proceeds from your set being sold to fans around the world.

They won't be sold in stores and they won't be found in a traditional Lego box. The boxes look like they are part of the online program.

Image: Lego

These are produced, sold, and shipped by Lego, the company that bought BrickLink in 2019.

Lego announced last month that the BrickLink Designer Program will be a permanent competition, but it is quite a bit different than the program we told you about in 2021. The previous BDP was about giving the designers of rejected Lego ideas sets a second chance to sell builds that wouldn't sell or play well enough to justify Lego making them in mass quantities.

Any Lego fan can design a set, as long as they use a limited amount of parts, follow specific submission guidelines, and use the Brick Link Studio software.

Image: pix027

The fans will be able to vote on their favorites in an earlier round in February, which the judges will take into account. If you want to get your creation in early, you have to wait until February 28th.

Lego will manufacture any set that reaches 3000 pre-orders once BrickLink selects five designs. There will be a limited edition of 20,000 or less, which is twice as many as the 10,000 cap in previous BDP rounds. You can sell twice as many sets now that Lego is only giving 5 percent of the proceeds.

If you don't allow Lego to make your set, Lego will own the rights to your design. All rights to the design will go to you if you don't choose it.

This isn't a place to lobby for Lego to go get the rights to produce sets based on Legend of Zelda or The Office, so the most important remaining tip is this. Lego doesn't want sets that are too similar to what it's already selling and you need to stay away from original intellectual properties.

"We are trying to avoid a perception that your design is a part of an official collection of sets, such as a specific Castle series, or a Modular building, for example," writes BrickLink.