LEGO City Has Made 723 Sets Since 2005, and the Sizes Tell a Story

Three Hundred and Six Parts Is the Real Average Size of a City Set

Setobrick currently tracks 723 sets under the City banner, released between 2005 and today, with 38 new entries already logged for 2026. Run the maths on the whole catalogue and the average lands at 306 parts. That number rarely makes it into a press release, but it is the honest baseline of the theme: not the four-figure showpieces that get all the attention, but the dozens of small vehicles, starter stations, accessory sets and polybags that fill most of the catalogue every single year.

The average matters because it explains why City feels approachable to new collectors and frustrating to part-count chasers at the same time. Most releases sit far below the theme's biggest builds, which means the flagship sets stand out precisely because they are exceptions, not the norm. When a set clears 1,000 parts here, it is genuinely rare air for this theme, unlike, say, a Star Wars or Icons release where four-figure counts are almost routine.

For a collector planning shelf space, this is useful context before you even open the box. A typical City set will not demand a weekend of building or a dedicated display shelf. The sets that do are a short list, and we go through them below.

The Size Ceiling Kept Climbing: From Four-Figure Rarities to a 2,010-Piece Flagship

Look at the top five sets by part count and a clear pattern appears. Downtown (60380) leads with 2,010 parts, released in 2023. The City Tower (60473) follows at 1,943 parts, from 2025. City Square (60097) holds third place with 1,683 parts, and it dates back to 2015. Explorer Train (60470) and Main Square (60271) round out the top five with 1,525 and 1,517 parts, from 2025 and 2020 respectively.

What stands out is the spread of years. The theme's record for biggest set has been broken more than once across the last decade, and the gap between the current champion and the newest challenger is close: Downtown's 2,010 parts sit only about a hundred parts ahead of The City Tower's 1,943. That is not a comfortable lead. If the pace of the last two years continues, City's all-time record could change again before this article does.

Compare that to City Square from 2015, which held a strong position for years before being overtaken. A decade separates City Square from Downtown, and yet the newer set adds about 300 more parts on top of it. That is real growth in ambition for a theme that used to top out well under 1,000 parts for its biggest annual release.

Downtown (60380) Is the Largest City Set in Our Database, and Its 14 Minifigures Prove the Point

Downtown does not just win on part count. It also carries 14 minifigures, an unusually dense line-up for the theme: a vet, a barber, a janitor, a pizza chef, a street musician, a hotel clerk, a blogger and several unnamed City residents, plus a kid in a dinosaur suit and another dressed as a raccoon. That is a cast built for a slice-of-life diorama, not a single vehicle or vignette.

The set's dominance becomes obvious once you compare it to everything else City released in 2023. That year's line-up included small stunt sets like the Dunk Stunt Ramp Challenge at 144 parts and the Spinning Stunt Challenge at 117 parts, an Off-Road Ambulance Rescue at 162 parts, and the largest of the rest, the Stunt Truck & Ring of Fire Challenge, at 479 parts. Downtown outsizes every one of its 2023 stablemates by a wide margin, several times over, and it was the only set that year built around a full city block rather than a single vehicle or challenge.

That contrast is exactly why Downtown ranks first by parts in the entire theme database of 723 sets. It is not a marginal winner, it is a set built at a completely different scale from its own release year.

2025 Nearly Matched the Record Twice Over

The City Tower (60473) is the second biggest City set ever recorded, at 1,943 parts, and it shipped in 2025 alongside seven minifigures: a police officer, an astronaut, a firefighter, a train conductor and three named City residents. Its theme path is plain City, no sub-theme attached, which puts it in the same bracket as Downtown as one of the few true flagship builds carrying the base City name rather than a spin-off label.

The same year also produced Explorer Train (60470) at 1,525 parts, tagged under the Arctic sub-theme, with six minifigures including explorers and a crane operator built around a cold-weather rescue narrative. Having two sets from a single year land in the all-time top five has not happened elsewhere in the dataset in recent memory, and it tells you 2025 was not a quiet year for City's biggest builds, even if the overall release count for that year, 37 sets, was actually below several earlier years.

For a collector who skipped 2025, this is worth flagging directly: two of the four largest City sets ever made came out that single year, and neither is the current record holder, meaning both are already secondary to the newer competition rather than curiosities from a slow year.

How Many City Sets Come Out Each Year: The Release Curve Since 2005

The theme launched in 2005 with 16 sets, then grew steadily. By 2012 the annual count had reached 32, and it kept climbing through the mid 2010s. The busiest year on record is 2022, with 49 new City sets, a level the theme has not returned to since.

After the 2022 peak, the count has settled into the high 30s and low 40s, with 44 sets in 2024, 37 in 2025 and 38 logged so far for 2026. That reads less like a decline and more like a plateau: City is not shrinking, it simply found a stable annual rhythm after a decade of near-constant growth. For collectors trying to budget shelf space by year, expect somewhere between 35 and 45 new City sets annually going forward, based on the last five years of data.

The Biggest City Sets Increasingly Live Under Sub-Theme Labels, Not the Plain City Tag

Look closely at the theme path of the top ranked sets and a pattern jumps out. City Square and Capital City are filed under the Traffic sub-theme. Explorer Train sits under Arctic. Space Base and Rocket Launchpad and Modular Space Station belong to Space. Police Train Heist is filed under Police. Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship belongs to Harbor, Cargo Train and Freight Train sit under Trains, and Jungle Air Drop Helicopter is filed under Jungle.

Of the theme's twelve biggest sets by part count, only Downtown, The City Tower and Main Square carry the plain City tag with no sub-theme attached. Volcano Heavy-Lift Helicopter is the other exception on the plain City list among the larger builds. Everything else that clears four figures in parts has been quietly filed under a narrower label.

Practically, this means a collector browsing a generic City shelf or category page could walk past most of the theme's biggest sets simply because they are catalogued as Arctic, Harbor, Space, Police or Trains rather than City proper. If you actually want the biggest builds the theme has produced, you need to check sub-themes, not just the flagship label.

What Counts as Big in City Today: Size Tiers by Part Count

City has never produced a set above 3,000 parts, so the ceiling for this theme sits well below what Icons or Technic regularly deliver. Based on the top 30 sets by part count in our database, three tiers describe the theme accurately.

• Above 1,500 parts: an exclusive club of five sets, led by Downtown at 2,010, The City Tower at 1,943, City Square at 1,683, Explorer Train at 1,525 and Main Square at 1,517.
• Between 1,000 and 1,500 parts: a wider group including Space Base and Rocket Launchpad (1,424), Police Train Heist (1,313), Volcano Heavy-Lift Helicopter (1,277), Jungle Air Drop Helicopter (1,250), Seaside Harbor with Cargo Ship and Cargo Train (both 1,226), Capital City (1,211), Lava Land Roller Coaster Park (1,165), Freight Train (1,153), Dump Truck & Front End Loader (1,132), Yellow Mobile Construction Crane (1,116) and Modular Space Station (1,099).
• Under 1,000 parts: the overwhelming majority of the 723 sets in the database, consistent with the theme-wide average of 306 parts.

If you are hunting for a genuine display centrepiece in City, the practical threshold to search for is 1,000 parts and up. That list currently holds fewer than 30 sets across two decades of releases, which tells you how selectively this theme hands out its biggest builds.

The 2026 Lineup Already Has a Top Ten All Time Heavyweight

This year's 38 releases include Police Train Heist (60508), which ranks seventh all time in the theme at 1,313 parts. It comes with six minifigures split between three police officers, two criminals and a prisoner, and it sits under the Police sub-theme rather than plain City, following the pattern we described above.

Other 2026 sets also land inside the all-time top 30: Lava Land Roller Coaster Park at 1,165 parts, Dump Truck & Front End Loader at 1,132 parts, and Airplane, Service Truck & Hovercraft Remix at 991 parts. That is three or four genuinely large builds inside a single release year, which is a stronger showing than several years in the mid 2010s managed.

With 38 sets logged, 2026 sits close to the theme's post 2022 norm rather than at either extreme. It is not a record year for volume, and it does not beat Downtown's part count, but it already places one set solidly among City's biggest builds ever made, and that is a meaningful result for a single year rather than a two decade average.

Where the Numbers Fall Short: What Raw Part Counts Cannot Tell You

Part count is a useful, honest metric, but it is not the whole story, and we would be doing you a disservice pretending otherwise. Two of the older sets still worth tracking down, Garage (7642) from 2009 and Police Headquarters (7744) from 2008, both sit at 958 parts, well outside today's top ten by count, yet they remain reference points for the theme's history because of what they represented at the time, not because of raw size.

Our database also cannot tell you how long a set takes to build, how satisfying the build sequence feels, or how much of the part count is small filler pieces versus meaningful structural elements. A 1,300 part train set and a 1,300 part modular building will feel completely different on a table, even though they score identically here.

Treat the rankings in this guide as a map of scale, not a map of quality. Use them to know what is genuinely rare and large in this theme, then judge the actual build, the minifigure line-up and the design on their own merits before deciding what earns a spot on your shelf.

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