The year 2023 has passed us by, and it was chock-full of exceptional LEGO creations. As is always the case, it’s a mammoth task to pour over 365 days of posts to find the most outstanding one in that span of time. But we narrowed the field down to these five finalists in the running for our 8th annual TBB LEGO Creation of the Year award.
We’ve got our top 5 picks listed below (in no particular order), and we’ll be announce the winner of TBB’s LEGO Creation of the Year 2023 later this week.
Also, be sure to check out the LEGO Creation of the Year announcements for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016 for all of our past winners.
The first LEGO build on our list was a creation popular with the TBB staff as well as all of our readers (#5 in our Top Articles post). Kraken Shadowy by Khang Huynh and Ky Duy Phong showed up on TBB in mid-January, and took our breath away with such realistic brick-built water. The pirate ship is no slouch either, featuring details aplenty and parts from all across the LEGO spectrum. I don’t know if we saw a better fusion of System, Technic, Bionicle, and Duplo parts for the rest of 2023.
The next creation of note from the past year was posted on August 18, 2023, yet references a different day: May 15th, 1988. Builder alex_bricks captures an epic moment in Formula 1 racing with Prost and Senna duking it out in the Monaco Grand Prix. For those unfamiliar, I’ll let Lino tell you all about the race. But you don’t have to be an F1 aficionado to appreciate Alex’s exceptional design. Textures of the smooth asphalt contrast the fluid mix of 1×1 round plates and snowflakes making up the water in the foreground and the rough, blocky cliffs in the back with their exposed studs. Adding all the minifigures everywhere and the scene feels action-packed, just like a race should!
At 200,000 bricks per person, our next entry made for quite the massive collaboration at Brickvention 2023. Joshua Morris, Rod Fiford, Gavin Rich, and Handoko Setyawan graced the pages of TBB back in January with the pirate-themed Cerulean Straits. The details in this construction are so intricate, with little vignettes popping up all over the place. Every time I spool through the photos, another new detail catches my eye. Clearly, even after 11 months, this collab is still stuck in our lemur-loving minds.
So far, we’ve had a bunch of large-scale creations on this list. But being big isn’t everything! And while the Bic Viper by Maxx Davidson may not be made of 800,000 bricks, it’s certainly a tour de force in exceptional parts usage. It even made our Ace Parts Usage top 5! I’ve taken my turn at trying to re-create real-world items with LEGO in a 1:1 scale, and it’s not easy at all! But to do that AND craft a beautiful starfighter at the same time is truly something special.
Finally, the last creation on our shortlist for this year is a work that was born of an internet forum. The RogueBricks collaboration, Rogue Odyssey, had individual pieces peppering the pages of TBB starting in November. But on December 7th, we were able to post the final combined LEGO diorama, bringing together the work of over 30 people into an ode to Ancient Greece. While we’re not able to list out everyone who participated, you can read more on this LEGO-loving crew and what they each contributed on Kevin J. Walter‘s Flick post.
Thank you for perusing our top picks in LEGO works for 2023, all deserving of being shortlisted as the best of the year. We’ll have the follow-up, our announcement of TBB’s LEGO Creation of the Year 2023, later this week.