Trung Thu 2027 in Hội An: Mid-Autumn Falls on 15 September

Tết Trung Thu — Vietnam's Mid-Autumn Festival — falls on Wednesday, 15 September 2027: the 15th day of the 8th lunar month in the year Đinh Mùi. In Hội An, the bigger night for visitors is actually the eve, Tuesday, 14 September 2027, when the town's lantern night coincides with the festival's build-up. We converted the lunar date against two independent Vietnamese calendar sources in August 2026; the anchors and method are at the end of this page.

The 2027 dates at a glance

Tuesday 14 September 2027 — the 14th day of the lunar month, Hội An's lantern night (Đêm Rằm Phố Cổ). The Ancient Town closes to motor traffic in the evening and is lit by silk lanterns and candles. This is the night the photographs come from.

Wednesday 15 September 2027 — Tết Trung Thu proper, the family night: children's lantern processions, lion and Thiên Cẩu dances at the assembly halls, mooncakes and tea at home.

The surrounding window, roughly 12–16 September — decorations, market stalls and performances spread across the neighbouring days; the town is dressed for the festival for most of that week.

Trung Thu is not a public holiday in Vietnam — offices and schools stay open — which is why the celebration concentrates into the evenings.

A national heritage event since 2023

Hội An's Mid-Autumn is not simply a bigger version of the national holiday. On 14 February 2023, Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism inscribed Tết Trung thu ở Hội An on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage list (Decision 228/QĐ-BVHTTDL), and the town formally received the title in September 2023. What the inscription recognises is the specific Hội An blend: a trading-port town that absorbed Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese festival customs over four centuries and kept its own versions of them alive.

The clearest example is the Thiên Cẩu dance — the heavenly-dog dance, a performance tradition specific to Hội An and its surroundings. It resembles the lion dance you may know from other Vietnamese cities, but it is an older local form: troupes move house to house and shop to shop through the festival nights, and the dance is believed to drive out misfortune ahead of the harvest moon. If you watch a dance in Hội An at Trung Thu, ask whether it is lân (lion) or Thiên Cẩu — locals are pleased to be asked.

The town's other heritage performance, bài chòi — the sung card game UNESCO listed in 2017 — runs on festival evenings by the river, as it does year-round.

What the nights look like

The template is Hội An's monthly lantern night, expanded: a procession through the Old Town, lion and Thiên Cẩu troupes at the Chinese assembly halls along Trần Phú street, a children's lantern parade in the early evening, and thousands of floating candles (hoa đăng) on the Thu Bồn. Boats carry visitors out among the candles from the An Hội bank. It is crowded in the middle and calm at the edges — and the river is the edge.

Planning a trip around this? See dates at our quiet riverside hotel on the Thu Bồn. Check availability →

Mooncakes

Mooncakes (bánh trung thu) come in two families: baked bánh nướng with a crisp pastry crust, and steamed bánh dẻo with a soft glutinous-rice skin. Hội An leans to the baked tradition; the older family bakeries along Lê Lợi and Trần Phú streets sell them by the box through September. A sealed box keeps two to three weeks and travels well.

Planning 2027: a midweek festival

In 2026 the festival lands on a Friday — 25 September 2026; our guide to this year's edition is here: Mid-Autumn in Hội An 2026. In 2027 it is a Tuesday–Wednesday pair, which changes the planning in your favour: midweek festival nights draw thinner crowds than weekend ones, and rooms hold availability slightly longer. The pattern that works: arrive Monday 13 September, take the lantern night on the 14th and the family night on the 15th, and keep Thursday the 16th as the quiet day before travelling on.

Staying on the river

We are a riverside hotel on the south bank of the Thu Bồn — 23 rooms, ten minutes by bicycle from the Old Town bridges. On festival nights the floating candles drift downriver past the quiet bank, which is a good way to see the festival's best image without standing in its densest crowd. Rooms for festival weeks in Hội An book out two to four months ahead; for mid-September 2027 that means booking by early summer. See the rooms, or start with our year-round guide to the Hội An lantern festival.

Dates and method. The conversion 15/8 âm lịch (year Đinh Mùi) = 15 September 2027 was checked against two independent Vietnamese lunar-calendar sources (ngaydep.com and ngaygio24.com) in August 2026, and the eve follows as 14 September 2027. Hội An's lantern night is held on the 14th day of the lunar month, not the 15th. If the town's official programme announces different event days closer to the time, we will update this page.