How LEGO Threw a Global Party for Kids—Inspired by Kids—with ‘World Play Day’

The LEGO Group truly took the UN’s resolution to heart in the best way. On June 11, 2025, it put the planet in “play mode” by building incredible experiences in Boston, Berlin, London, and Shanghai. It began with LEGO’s Build the Change challenge. That undertaking wanted to give kids a voice in shaping their lives and their future. The program asked children themselves how they would “reimagine their cities through play.” It then took those ideas—which often turned into the exact kind of wonderful concepts only a kid could come up with—and made them a reality on June 11.

In each of the four participating cities, The LEGO Group worked with local governments to build unique, interactive play activations for World Play Day. Each free experience is unique to that location. They reflect both the city and what kids who live there want to see from the place they call home.

In Berlin, that included turning ordinary space into “bursting hubs of imagination” inspired by “kids’ visions of rhythm and sport.” In Shanghai, the riverfront became home to “whimsical structures” and “interactive challenges” for children to engage with and enjoy. And this summer, London’s Play Pavilion is hosting an “immersive environment” celebrating play and imagination.

In Boston, the new home for LEGO’s U.S. headquarters, the company transformed the Rose Kennedy Greenway into three play areas for World Play Day. One celebrates a local sea monster, another is a playground that turns New England-inspired locations into games, and the third holds a massive boombox that lets kids create their own musical beat with LEGO Bricks.

The LEGO Group invited me, a lifelong local, to a sneak peek at its Boston activation ahead of World Play Day. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen for children in the greater Boston area. It’s also one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen around here as an adult. The whole activation is creative, entertaining, engaging, and fun. It’s truly playful.

“The Dock” celebrates the mythical Gloucester Sea Creature by turning that beast into a giant, colorful play area. Kids can climb aboard a giant boat as the monster swarms around it. There’s also a free claw game so they can nab extra unique LEGO pieces, which they can then use to build their own creature right on site.

At “The Block,” kids can shoot hoops, take photos, and play other games at (what kids think of as) typical Boston locations. So, yes, obviously there’s a donut shop, because every New England kid knows what we’re all about around here. But there’s also a bus stop and a lobster shack, because we actually do run on just more than coffee. There’s also a spot where a photographer will capture you dunking on a giant hoop. It then gets turned into a free trading card photo for you to take home.

The highlight of the three areas is “The Beat Brick” activation, a kid’s idea I can’t believe LEGO pulled off. It’s a giant beatbox with a built-in step sequencer that plays different notes depending on where kids place LEGO bricks. Even more impressively, the color of the bricks influences the sound. It’s not just that one spot plays a different type of instrument and note. No, a green, blue, or red brick will make that exact tile produce a slightly different sound.

It’s hard to explain just how cool this boombox really is, but I had to drag myself away from it. I could have spent hours playing. And that’s the point of LEGO’s World Play Day. It’s all about promoting play at a time when kids are getting less of it than ever.

LEGO told our visiting group about how it’s working to overcome “play deficits,” a growing problem as children have fewer opportunities to play in their communities. Children and their parents, especially in urban cities where almost 1/3 of all kids live—a number expected to jump to 70% by 2050—also don’t feel like their local governments prioritize play opportunities. And as the UN said when it turned June 11 into a global call to action, “play is considered to have a positive impact on promoting tolerance, resilience, and facilitating social inclusion, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding.”

The LEGO Group (more than) took the lead piloting this year’s global play party. The first World Play Day was a huge undertaking for LEGO. It involved significant planning, development, engineering, organizing, and cooperation in four different major metropolitan areas in four different companies. It worked with both local governments, local groups, artists, and engineers. It’s the kind of event you’d understand a company maybe doing once every five years instead of annually. But LEGO hopes to do more even more places in the future.

It’s also hoping others will join them in promoting this worthy cause in the years to come. The company went big for its first World Play Day, but it says it would be happy to just be a part of a much bigger effort that involves far more companies, organizations, and cities going forward. That doesn’t mean The LEGO Group is just looking to pass the baton, though. They’re committed to this goal. I got a chance to speak to The LEGO Group America’s President, Skip Kodak, and I asked him what he likes World Play Day to look like in five or ten years.

He shared:

I would love to see us doing what you’ll witness this week here in Boston in dozens of cities. And I would love to see it be less about The LEGO Group trying to drive it. We’re happy to do it. We feel it’s part of our mission and our vision for being a global force for learning through play. But seeing urban planners and the people who lead major cities understanding the attractiveness of play as part of the value proposition they offer their citizens, instead of how do we [at LEGO] figure that out? This is an essential part of a city’s infrastructure that doesn’t usually exist.

So beginning to catalyze a movement and having 10 years from now the movement be, not running on its own, but building momentum in a way where it becomes part of what makes a community attractive? As communities are competing for talent and people and tax streams, this is a feature that can make a big difference, especially for everybody who wants to attract families.

It was obvious listening to everyone involved with World Play Day that they sincerely believe in this undertaking. They were/are invested and excited about this project, and for the best of reasons. Why wouldn’t they be? A global, iconic toy company, acting on its own best ideals, gave them the time and resources to build incredible, original playgrounds inspired by kids’ ideas all around the world. It’s genuinely wonderful, the kind of thing you simply don’t expect from a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. But the real beauty of LEGO’s World Play Day is the possibility of what it could mean for the future. Hopefully, it will inspire governments everywhere to ensure that one of the most important, most fundamental things about being a kid is not only never overlooked, but that it’s always celebrated.

If that happens, we won’t even need a World Play Day. Everyday, everywhere, will be exactly that.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist who won’t show you his World Play Day slam dunk trading card no matter how much you ask. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.