How heavy is a lightsaber?

None of the films weighs a lightsaber, and the blade itself has no mass, so the only part that counts is the hilt. Our 0.7 kg is an estimate based on the metal replica hilts Disney sells in its Star Wars parks: a solid metal tube of about 28 cm with a battery and electronics inside.

The official numbers come out a little higher. DK’s canon reference book Star Wars Life Size (2025) lists the Skywalker lightsaber, the one Anakin built and Luke and Rey later carried, at 1 kg (2.2 lb), and Yoda’s much shorter weapon at 0.6 kg (1.3 lb). In Legends, the stories published before Disney reset the canon in 2014, the Saga Edition roleplaying rulebook also gives a standard lightsaber 1 kg. Our figure sits between Yoda’s and a full-size Jedi hilt, so treat it as the light end of the official range.

No. Canon describes the blade as plasma with no mass, held in shape by a field projected from the kyber crystal inside the hilt. Legends says the same and adds that all of a lightsaber’s weight sits in its hilt. That makes it unlike a real sword, whose balance point is out along the blade.

Both continuities say the blade creates a gyroscopic effect, which resists changes of direction and makes the weapon hard to control without training. In Legends this is why the short shoto blade was easier to handle. The Darksaber gets its own twist: Sabine Wren finds it “heavier than I thought” in Star Wars Rebels, and in The Book of Boba Fett the Armorer explains that it feels heavier the more its wielder fights against it.

Hilts vary in size. Legends puts a typical one at 24 to 30 cm. In canon, Luke’s green lightsaber is 28 cm (11 in), Kylo Ren’s crossguard hilt is 29.8 cm and Yoda’s is just 15 cm.

For the 1977 film, set decorator Roger Christian built the hero hilts from old Graflex press camera flash handles he found in a London photography shop, adding grips and a belt ring. Darth Vader’s hilt came from a different flash, made by Micro Precision Products. The blades were three-sided rods covered in reflective Scotchlite and spun by a small motor in the hilt, and they broke so easily that David Prowse was replaced by fencer Bob Anderson for the later duels.

The prequels switched to steel and aluminium rods, then to carbon fibre for Revenge of the Sith. Today the closest thing to a real lightsaber you can hold is a park-built one: at Savi’s Workshop in Galaxy’s Edge, the hilt parts are all metal over a plastic chassis, and the finished hilt weighs over two pounds (0.9 kg), plus an LED blade in a plastic tube.

In 2021 Disney showed a lightsaber with a blade that extends and retracts on its own. According to Engadget, patents suggest a motor unrolls a blade made of LED-lit plastic, a reminder that any real blade would add weight the movie one never had. Disney has not published its weight.