We love writing about the amazing LEGO models that people create. In fact, we’ve done it nearly 750 times over the course of the past year! Remember any of them? Well, you can always look through our MOC repository if not. But to help you out, we’re going to take a look at some of the absolute finest creations to have appeared in 2025. Of this shortlist, one will be crowned TBB’s Creation of the Year. What are the rules? Apart from the fact it should be made of LEGO – anything goes! Big or small, Nice Parts Use or emotional impact… All that matters is that it’s made an impression, both on us staff at TBB Towers and on you, our wonderful readers!

Take a look at our nominees below. Pick out your favourite, or let us know what we’ve missed!

Niina L – Gray Tree

We come across many of our featured MOCs while cruising around the internet, but conventions are also a great place to find new builds (and builders!). For instance, during a trip to the famous Skaerbaek Fan Weekend in Denmark, we came across Niina L and her terrific trees! We wrote about a couple of them at the time, but it’s this grey tree that really stuck with us. Not only because we were trying to figure out how it was made – which Niina has since explained! – but because of the story behind it. A desolate, mechanical landscape, but with a single green shoot nonetheless giving us hope!

DeRa – Godzilla Minus One

DeRa makes a second consecutive appearance on our Creation of the Year shortlist, following their tiger nomination from last year. Clearly the tiger didn’t scare us enough to declare it the winner, so DeRa ups the scary stakes with a mutant lizard! But rather than being cowed by it, we’re in love with it. The texture is superb, seamlessly blending old (pre-2003) and new dark grays – which is not as easy as it sounds. It was almost a year in the making, and the dedication really shows.

Łukasz Alagierski – Ganesha

Has there ever been a more perfect use of a molded animal head than this divine build? Łukasz’ creation captures so much about what we love about the current moment in mocs – bold use of colour, drawing cross-pollinating parts from a wide range of themes (behold that Scala quilt!), and finding ever new means of connection. We paid our respects to this Hindu altar back in February and it’s stuck with us since.

Sakiya Watanabe (N.A.B.E.mocs) – Howl’s Moving Castle

It’s been barely over a year since Sakiya Watanabe boldly joined the afol fold as N.A.B.E.mocs, casting aside his earlier “traditional” techniques in pouring heart and soul into organic and innovative build techniques. We could have picked any number of the builder’s works for the shortlist, but the build that stuck with us the most is Sakiya’s take on Howl’s Moving Castle, which we discovered in May. It’s typically well-sculpted, but also features some equally terrific parts use – from unusual themes too! You’ve got halves of the short-lived Star Wars Planets line, and limb elements from the even shorter-lived Galidor theme.

alex_mocs – Viridis Mantidae

Here at TBB, we’re huge fans of the Bio-Cup and builds that breathe new life into old Bionicle parts to create lifelike characters. alex_mocs is a master of the style and created several unforgettable characters this year, but the one that best encapsulates the builder’s talent is this killer beauty that entranced us in June.  Starting from a Bionicle hero part (a bohrok shield), every element, whether System,Technic, or cloth, i carefully selected to preserve clean lines and immaculate colour blocking.

Torger Almaas – Samurai Journey

Torger Almaas is another new builder to us at the Brothers Brick – but that doesn’t mean we weren’t impressed by their samurai diorama, shared back in February. As we wrote at the time, this isn’t necessarily about using tricksy connections or unusual parts. It’s more about expert use of composition, colour and forced perspective, all coming together like brushstrokes to get us thinking about the story behind the build. And that, ultimately, is what art is all about, right?

 Victoria Worsley – Belville Library

For many builders, LEGO’s Belville line of poseable dolls with fabric clothes was shunted off into the memory hole like Galidor as a theme with little to offer “serious builders.” Victoria has been reclaiming Belville dolls as every bit expressive as the ubiquitous minifigs. Her Belville Library showcases how building for a larger scale figure can be liberating, opening up novel ways to use familiar parts. It doesn’t hurt that her library design, which we checked out in September, is based on the high school hangout for Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Kyle Collard – Duel on Mustafar

The nature of our end-of-year lists means that by the time we make them, our nominees are often already award-winners in other arenas. So it proves with Kyle Collard’s massive Mustafarian masterpiece! Despite consisting of more than 26,000 pieces, Kyle managed to cart this build to Brick Rodeo in Texas, where it duly won the ‘Best Star Wars Scene’ award. The use of lights for the magma, explosions and lightsabers brings focus for the viewer; a useful tool when navigating this behemoth!

Corrine (craftingcorrine) – The Glorious Lego-lution

LEGO mosaics remain a thriving format for expression in bricks, as evidenced by this stunning tribute to Arcane’s finale. Corrine deftly plays with colour through both the application of dots and tiles, greebly transparent elements, and character details that pop from the canvass. It’s a stirring piece that also serves as a reminder that it doesn’t take a huge collection of bricks to create powerful works in LEGO.

 Oliver Barrell -Pterosaur Ship

With the Brothers Brick turning 20 this year, it’s no secret that our crew skews a little old school, but not all of the builders we cover are as crotchety as us. TfoL Oliver Barrell is just 15 years old and already knocking our socks of with incredible creations. Oliver had an impressive year, winning a prize in the Summer Joust and creating a buzz with this remarkable spacecraft back in April. Everything about this alien ship, especially the wings that resemble greebly combs, is set to stun.

Brennen (brickbot_studio) – The Seamstress

Minifig Monday roundups have been some of the most popular  features throughout 2025, and based on your responses, the creation that caught you in its web was this sinister weaver from the movie 9 showcased back in August. The villainess is a masterclass in building with only LEGO’s tiniest elements to create intricate detail that punches well above its weight class.

Meredith Najewicz – Gion no Maiko

Japanese architecture continues to inspire many incredible LEGO builds, but Meredith makes it look fresh by recreating the Edo era at Minilander scale. So many clever techniques are used to represents wood, stone, and paper across the building’s two floors and interiors. We missed this model’s debut at Brickworld over the summer but sung its praises in November when Meredith created a matching geisha vignette for the Creations for Charity drive.

Luke (cathedralofbricks) – The Delights of Marrakech

A late entry at the end! If you’ve been keeping up with our recent MOC posts, you may recognise this wonderful Moroccan palace by Luke. This is one of many superb castles built by Luke over the year. Although he’s perfected the art of sprinkling colour among his builds, the nature of castles does mean that grey is the dominating colour. Not so with this build! The white and tan immediately brighten things up, with greens, blues and reds among the foliage making things pop further. Oh, and did we mention it’s enormous?!

Keep an eye out in the new year to find out which creation will be crowned our 2025 champion. Let us know your pick in the comments!