If you've heard the news circulating among Hong Kong robotics parents lately, you might be wondering: "LEGO Spike is being discontinued — should I be worried about my child's training?"
The short answer is: no. But the longer answer is worth reading, because understanding what's changing — and what isn't — will help you make smarter decisions for your child's STEAM journey in 2026 and beyond.
In January 2026, LEGO Education made a major announcement: the entire SPIKE product portfolio — including SPIKE Prime (for older students) and SPIKE Essential (for younger learners) — will be discontinued. End of sales is set for 30 June 2026, after which the SPIKE App will also be retired.
This isn't a sudden collapse. It's a planned transition. LEGO Education is pivoting to a brand-new product line called LEGO Education Computer Science & AI, which began shipping in April 2026. The new kits are designed around collaborative learning in groups of four students, with hardware covering K-2, Grades 3-5, and Grades 6-8 age bands.
This is a significant shift in direction — moving LEGO Education away from robotics-first learning toward a broader computer science and AI literacy curriculum. It's a response to what schools worldwide have been asking for: a structured, classroom-ready path to teach AI concepts starting from kindergarten.
Here's the important distinction that many parents miss: WRO (World Robot Olympiad) is a separate organisation from LEGO Education.
WRO sets its own rules and hardware requirements each season. For the 2026 season — themed "Robots Meet Culture" and culminating at the International Final in San Juan, Puerto Rico this December — competition hardware has not fundamentally changed. Teams are still building robots using programmable systems compatible with what SUP students have been trained on.
More importantly, WRO has been gradually opening up its RoboMission rules: since 2025, robots can incorporate 3D-printed PLA parts, metal components, and third-party motors alongside LEGO — with a 1,500g weight limit. This actually signals that the competition world is evolving beyond strict LEGO dependency, which gives well-trained teams like ours even more flexibility.
The competitive pathway for SUP's LEGO Elite students remains fully intact.
Before anything else, let's be clear: LEGO is not going away from robotics education, and it shouldn't. LEGO bricks remain one of the most brilliant learning tools ever created. They are intuitive to assemble, forgiving to modify, and accessible to any child regardless of prior experience. A student can pick up a LEGO Spike set on day one and build something that actually moves — that immediate reward is genuinely powerful for building confidence and curiosity.
At the beginner and intermediate stages of robotics training, LEGO remains our platform of choice for exactly these reasons. It lowers the barrier to entry, keeps sessions energetic, and gives younger students a physical, tactile way into engineering thinking.
The question isn't whether LEGO is good. It is. The question is: what happens when a student is ready to go further?
In 2025, our LEGO Elite team entered WRO Hong Kong's Future Innovators category at the Elementary level with a challenge that pushed them far beyond any standard LEGO kit. The theme: "How to sustain life on Mars."
This is a Future Innovators challenge, which means students don't just build a robot — they design, engineer, and present a complete innovative system addressing a real-world problem. Our team's answer was a multi-robot Mars colony support ecosystem comprising three interconnected systems:
1. The Seed Dispenser — Agricultural Sustainability BotA robot engineered to autonomously dispense seeds across a simulated Martian terrain, addressing the challenge of growing food in an environment with no natural soil ecosystem. The team designed the dispenser mechanism from scratch, factoring in payload, terrain variability, and deployment accuracy.
2. The Scouting Bot — AI-Powered Resource DetectionA mobile reconnaissance robot equipped with the KittenBot KOI AI Camera — an offline AI module capable of real-time visual recognition, object classification, and image-based decision making. The scouting bot was trained to identify and classify different types of Martian resources, including gypsum and haematite, navigating the field autonomously and reporting back findings.
The KOI camera is a serious piece of kit. It runs its own AI chip (the K210), processes visual data entirely offline without cloud dependency, and integrates directly with micro:bit via graphical programming — allowing the team to train their own custom object classification model for the specific resources in the competition scenario.
3. The Base Station — micro:bit Communication Tower + Solar ChargingA static base station built with micro:bit at its core, serving two functions: receiving wireless signal data transmitted by the scouting bot (enabling real-time field awareness), and housing a solar panel system to charge the mobile robots — addressing the fundamental energy challenge of off-world survival. The team also integrated soil data tracking into the base, monitoring conditions relevant to the agricultural systems.
The full hardware stack across the project included: KittenBot KOI AI Camera, micro:bit controllers, ultrasonic sensors, custom motor configurations, and solar energy components — all integrated, programmed, and presented by students under the age of 13.
The result: 1st Runner Up (Silver Award) at WRO Hong Kong 2025 — and Hong Kong representatives at the Asia Pacific competition.
At most robotics centres, training is built around the kit. When the kit changes, the curriculum has to be rebuilt from scratch.
At SUP, it works differently. Our proprietary curriculum is built around engineering thinking — how to approach a challenge, how to design a solution, how to iterate under pressure, and how to compete. The physical kit is one tool among many, not the curriculum itself.
Our students learn:
A student who understands how a sensor-driven autonomous robot actually makes decisions doesn't start over when the hardware changes. They adapt — which is exactly the skill set the real world requires.
If your child is already in our LEGO Elite programme: nothing changes. Their training continues, their competition preparation continues, and their skill development is on track.
If your child has been considering starting robotics: now is actually an excellent time to begin. LEGO remains the best entry point — accessible, hands-on, and genuinely enjoyable. Our LEGO Elite programme starts there and builds progressively toward the kind of multi-system, AI-integrated engineering you saw in the Mars project above.
If your child is approaching secondary school age: the new LEGO Education Computer Science & AI curriculum, paired with our Futurepreneur AI Academy programme, creates an interesting complementary pathway that bridges robotics with AI literacy. Watch this space.
The fact that LEGO Education is pivoting toward AI literacy reflects a much larger global shift. The robotics education market is growing rapidly, and the most forward-thinking education systems are no longer asking "should we teach coding?" — they're asking "how do we teach students to think alongside AI?"
LEGO got students into the room. Now the room is getting bigger.
At SUP, we've been preparing for that bigger room for years. Our competition results are evidence of what that preparation produces. The kit changes. The thinking doesn't.
Whether your child is currently enrolled with us or just starting to explore robotics, our consultants can walk you through the current LEGO Elite curriculum, competition pathways for 2026, and how our programmes grow with your child.
Book a trial class → or WhatsApp our team directly.
SUP Education is an Official Supporting Organisation of WRO Hong Kong and a STEM.org Accredited™ institution, with campuses in Lai Chi Kok and Causeway Bay.
