2025 is the perfect time for a new LEGO NINJAGO City set

LEGO NINJAGO's 15th anniversary likely won't have a new NINJAGO City addition, but 2025 was arguably the perfect time for a smaller City set.

In case you've somehow missed it, next year is LEGO NINJAGO's 15th anniversary, and there are big plans for the theme, including a line of anniversary models and minifigures, as well as the huge 71861 The Old Town. It's going to be a huge year for the theme, and it's admittedly starting to overshadow 2025's big NINJAGO release.

Whether you remember or not, the fifth LEGO NINJAGO City set, 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops, was launched in March 2025. It expanded the range, which started in 2017, and is the smallest of the five sets, using 3,244 pieces to make up the single-baseplate module as well as 10 minifigures.

The NINJAGO City set strongly deviates from the rest of the multi-storey collection by acting as both a corner and an inverted corner module at the same time, and shifting the upper walkway half a level higher than it should be briefly. These differences are just a small part of what has made 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops go by without as much fanfare as other NINJAGO City entries have within the community.

With the upcoming anniversary next year, you may wonder why the NINJAGO team didn't reserve a NINJAGO City slot for 2026, leading some to believe that more recent City models are on a two-year schedule. For context, 71741 NINJAGO City Gardens was released for the 10th anniversary of the theme in 2021, then 71799 NINJAGO Markets in 2023, and 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops in 2025. Despite assumptions that NINJAGO City models are reserved for every other year, designer Lee Chi Wing has clarified that this is not the case, and something original like 71861 The Old Town was always on the table alongside another NINJAGO City model.

“[NINJAGO City] was definitely something that was on the table in the very beginning, when we thought about, ‘What are we going to do for the D2C [direct-to-consumer] set this year?’” Lee told Bricks By Mind. “I think there is this misconception in the fan community that we have a schedule to NINJAGO City… we don’t. Every time it happens, it’s just because something happens.

“For instance, the 10th anniversary [for NINJAGO City Gardens], and then we had Dragons Rising coming up, so one of the big sets to draw people in [was NINJAGO City Markets]. And then Workshops was actually something where there was a suggestion in the team about exploring the possibility of making a smaller NINJAGO City set. So it’s never something that we plan out, like the Icons team would say ‘this year we definitely need another modular’.”

71837 NINJAGO City Workshops' release this year was just a coincidence and does not mean the range has a specific release schedule. The NINJAGO team eventually had other plans for the 15th-anniversary model, either way, and there's sound reasoning.

“Another option we thought about was remaking a certain set or doing a set of a location that has never been done before,” Lee added. “Everything that people have speculated about, we thought of it. But personally, I really rooted for the direction we ended up with, which is to make a new original location, and there are several reasons to it.

“NINJAGO City was just out of left field, and you look at it like, ‘Wow, now I want to pay attention to the theme.’ And I think for the 15th anniversary, it’s really important to recapture that sort of uniqueness in our centrepiece of the celebration.

“When we were talking about [whether or not] we should do another NINJAGO City module, that already rubbed me the wrong way because this is supposed to be celebrating the franchise anniversary. We should be celebrating what allows it to stay for 15 years, right? And to just do another one of something, not even necessarily NINJAGO City, but another remake of a set – all those ideas go down the same direction to me, which is it’s not a statement to show why NINJAGO is still here after 15 years."

The logic of depicting something original, and not connected to anything seen in the theme prior, be it from the series or a set collection, is sound. It means that fans who have joined NINJAGO's community since 2017, or even 2023, don't need to worry about tracking down those older NINJAGO models, and won't have any required homework to understand the basic concept of the model. That latter point goes for LEGO fans with no interest in NINJAGO, too.

Now that it's clear 71861 The Old Town makes sense for the theme's 15th anniversary, that leaves the question of whether the year before was the right time for a new NINJAGO City model. Arguably, it was, but only for 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops specifically.

At £219.99 / $249.99 / €249.99, 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops is nearly the most affordable of the NINJAGO City sets. When you take inflation into account, it definitely is, since the docks would be around £260 today. It launched at a time when there was another NINJAGO City model available too, that being the retiring and sold-out 71799 NINJAGO City Markets.

That gave newer NINJAGO fans nine months to start a sufficient NINJAGO City display, or pick up just 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops for a taste of the range without breaking the bank as much as they would have had to previously. Budgets are also an important point in what makes 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops a perfect release for 2025.

NINJAGO fans will know that 2026's slate from January to March is already looking enticing. The anniversary models are mostly at higher price points, packed with new and exclusive minifigures from Grimfax to the First Spinjitzu Master. Suffice to say that it's going to be an expensive year for NINJAGO fans, if the following nine months look anything like the first three. Those who feel obliged to pick 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops can at least revel in the fact that they aren't spending as much as usual on a new NINJAGO City entry, in that case, and that's not to say that the fifth model in the range is light on exclusive minifigures.

Exclusive minifigures of Casual Harumi, Twitchy Tim, Dorama, and Casual Harumi populate 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops, some of which have been requested by NINJAGO fans for some time. They're not nearly as essential as some of next year's minifigures, though, also meaning that NINJAGO fans can more safely skip 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops if their budget is reserved for next year.

With other releases such as 71846 The Fire Knight Mech and 71847 The Guardian Dragon from 2025, 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops was a perfectly satisfying, yet entirely non-essential set that NINJAGO fans needed before the theme's most exciting year to date. From that perspective, there's a lot to appreciate in the fifth NINJAGO City model.

You can dive deep into 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops in our in-depth review, and see how it stacks up next to every other NINJAGO City set here. 71837 NINJAGO City Workshops is available now for £219.99 / $249.99 / €249.99.

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