A Lego minifigure, often simply referred to as a Lego figure or a minifig, is a small plastic articulated figurine made of special Lego bricks produced by Danish building toy manufacturer The Lego Group. They were first produced in 1978 and have been a success, with over 4 billion produced worldwide as of 2020. Minifigures are usually found within Lego sets, although they are also sold separately as collectables in blind bags (e.g. under the Lego theme of the same name), or can be custom-built on lego.com and in Lego Stores. While some are named as specific characters, either licensed from already existing franchises or of Lego's own creation, many are unnamed and are designed simply to fit within a certain theme (such as police officers, astronauts and pirates). They are highly customizable, and parts from different figures can be mixed and matched, resulting in many combinations.

There are also other types of figures from Lego sets, such as animals, Duplo figures or mini-doll figures. The Lego minifigure is, together with the Lego brick, the company's mascot and one of the most popular toys of all time. Minifigures are collected by both children and adults.

Similar figures, often called "Lego compatible minifigures", are also produced by various other companies (often as clones/knock-offs), such as Kre-O (called Kreons), Lepin, Cobi, Block Tech, or Mega Bloks.

A precursor to the minifigure was released in 1975. These were at the same scale as the current minifigures, but had a different design. They had solid torsos without separate movable arms, solid lower body pieces that were not moveable, and heads without printed features. They had a small variety of headpieces in various colors, including caps, pigtail hair and cowboy hats.

The first modern minifigures were released in 1978, included in Castle, Space, and Town sets. These were designed by Jens Nygaard Knudsen, who had come up with the idea for having the torsos, legs, and arm pieces interchangeable. As these were made into pieces, the company decided to give them a simple facial expression, rendered as two solid black dots for eyes and a smile painted in solid black, and without any gender or racial components, believing that these factors would be "determined by the child's imagination and play". The arms incorporated clips as "hands" which allowed figures to hold a wide range of different utensils and tools.

In 1989 for the launch of Pirates theme, some minifigures also included hooks for hands, as well as peg legs; this was the first departure from the traditional body parts. Starting with Lego Pirates in 1989 and spreading to Lego Town and Lego Castle in the next few years, minifigures were also produced with different facial expressions such as facial hair, eye patches, feminine makeup, and sunglasses. Most of these early facial additions were still centered around the two eyes and smile, however starting in 1997 with Willa the Witch of the Fright Knights facial expressions became more complex including open mouths and detailed eyes.

Another departure from traditional parts was the use of spring-loaded legs. These legs are joined at the top. These legs were only featured in basketball sets, 2002–2003. Other leg variations include short legs for children or dwarfs, or long legs (used in the Toy Story and Avatar themes).

In 2003, the first minifigures with naturalistic skin tones (as opposed to the yellow used until this point) were released, as part of the Lego Basketball theme; these minifigures were also created in the likeness of living people (additionally this also included Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars theme). In April 2004, the Harry Potter theme began to use natural skin tones, and Lego Star Wars followed in June, and by 2005 the use of natural skin tones was expanded to all licensed products; in which figures were created to represent film actors and other living people. Popular examples between 2005 and 2008 include Star Wars, Marvel, Batman, The Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones minifigures.