A 12-month Vietnamese festival calendar with verified Gregorian dates: Vesak, Vu Lan, Mid-Autumn, Tết 2027, Hùng Kings 2027, plus every Hội An lantern night.
Facts checked
Vietnam keeps two clocks at once. One is the Gregorian calendar of school, work, and the fixed National Day on 2 September. The other is the lunar calendar, and it governs nearly every festival that actually changes the texture of the country — the streets, the markets, which restaurants close and which fill — from Tết and the Hùng Kings to Phật Đản, Vu Lan, Tết Trung Thu, and the monthly full-moon Lantern Festival in Hội An. Plan a trip against the wrong clock and you can miss the festival you flew in for by a single day.
This is a practical calendar from September 2026 through September 2027, with every major Vietnamese festival converted to a verified Gregorian date. Every lunar date below was converted two independent ways on 12 September 2026 — with the Hồ Ngọc Đức Vietnamese lunar-calendar algorithm (UTC+7) and by counting from the astronomical new-moon times — and checked against the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha's Phật Đản guidance and the Government portal's 2027 holiday drafts. For each festival you get what it actually means, how crowded Hội An gets, and how the rhythm of a riverside hotel shifts on that day — so you can either build your trip around a festival deliberately or steer clear of the most disruptive ones.
| Festival | Lunar date | Gregorian date | Hội An lantern night (the evening before) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tết Trung Thu — Mid-Autumn 2026 | 15/8 | Friday 25 September 2026 | Thursday 24 September |
| Christmas and New Year | fixed | 25 December 2026 and 1 January 2027 | — |
| Tết Nguyên Đán — Lunar New Year 2027 (Year of the Goat) | 1/1 | Saturday 6 February 2027 | Friday 19 February (Nguyên Tiêu, the year's biggest) |
| Quán Thế Âm Festival, Marble Mountains, Đà Nẵng | 19/2 | Friday 26 March 2027 | Sunday 21 March |
| Sưa flower festival, Hương Trà | set by the bloom | first half of April 2027, dates announced February–March | — |
| Giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương — Hùng Kings' Day 2027 | 10/3 | Friday 16 April 2027 | Tuesday 20 April |
| Phật Đản — Vesak 2027 | 15/4 (Vesak week from 8/4) | Thursday 20 May 2027 (week 13–20 May) | Wednesday 19 May |
| DIFF — Đà Nẵng fireworks | fixed | Saturday nights, roughly late May to mid-July 2027, schedule not yet published | — |
| Vu Lan 2027 | 15/7 | Monday 16 August 2027 | Sunday 15 August |
| Quốc Khánh — National Day 2027 | fixed | Thursday 2 September 2027 | — |
| Tết Trung Thu — Mid-Autumn 2027 | 15/8 | Wednesday 15 September 2027 | Tuesday 14 September |
Public holidays are only Tết, Hùng Kings' Day, National Day, 1 January and 30 April–1 May; the Buddhist festivals and the lantern nights close nothing. The 2027 Tết holiday block is still a government draft (decision due 30 September 2026) — see the Tết section below.
Hội An's defining monthly event is the Lantern Festival on the 14th day of every lunar month, the night before the full moon. Streetlights in the Old Town go off, lanterns come on, the Hoài River fills with floating candle-lanterns, and the town glows for four to five hours.
Lantern nights from September 2026 to September 2027 — the 14th day of each lunar month, verified against the astronomical new moon at UTC+7:
The September full moon (the Mid-Autumn one) and the first lantern night after Tết tend to be the busiest. May, June, July are gentler.
At the hotel: Old Town fills heavily on lantern nights. From our riverside hotel on the Thu Bồn south bank in Cẩm Nam, the lanterns are 10 minutes by bicycle and the return after dinner is a quiet retreat away from the crowd. See our piece on sunset and moon viewing along the Thu Bồn for vantage points that work on lantern nights.
Tết Trung Thu falls on Friday 25 September 2026, the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. In 2027 it falls on Wednesday 15 September 2027; our Trung Thu 2027 guide carries that year's lantern night and what the town does that evening.
In Vietnam, Tết Trung Thu is primarily a children's festival. Children carry star-shaped lanterns through the streets, lion dance troupes perform on every block, and families gather for mooncakes (bánh trung thu) — dense pastries filled with lotus seed paste, mung bean, salted egg yolk, or modern flavours like green tea and durian.
In Hội An, Trung Thu is one of the most beautiful nights of the year. Children's lanterns thread the Old Town. The Hoài River fills with floating lights. Lion dancers visit shops for blessings. The lantern night on 24 September (the day before) is busier than usual; Trung Thu itself, the 25th, is the main event.
At the hotel: Booking demand spikes. We hold mooncake at breakfast for guests staying that week. The town runs late.
Vietnam is not a Christian-majority country, but Christmas (Giáng Sinh) is widely celebrated as a secular festival in cities and tourist towns. Hội An's Old Town decorates lavishly. Cafés serve mulled wine. There is a slight Western-tourist seasonal peak from mid-December to early January.
Vietnamese New Year on the Gregorian calendar — Tết Dương Lịch — is observed on 1 January 2027 as a one-day public holiday. It is much smaller than Lunar New Year, which is the cultural main event.
Tết 2027 — the Year of the Goat (Đinh Mùi) — falls on Saturday 6 February 2027. The official public-holiday block is not decided yet. The Ministry of Home Affairs put two drafts to consultation on 4–10 August 2026: Thursday 4 to Wednesday 10 February (seven days — the option the Ministry of Culture backed on 7 August and the one the Ministry of Home Affairs submitted to the Government on 11 September 2026), or Friday 5 to Sunday 14 February. The Prime Minister's decision is due by 30 September 2026 (draft as published by the Government portal); we will update this line when it lands. In practice many family businesses close earlier and reopen later than any official block. For what actually shuts in Hội An on mùng 1–3 and what stays open, see our Tết in Hội An 2027 guide.
Tết is the largest festival in the Vietnamese year. Whole families travel to ancestral homes. Cities empty; villages fill. Houses are cleaned, debts settled, peach blossom and kumquat trees set up at the door. The first three days of the lunar year (in 2027: Saturday 6 February, Sunday 7 February, Monday 8 February) are the most sacred — the days when ancestors are believed to visit, and when family meals are largest.
Practical hotel impact: Domestic flights and trains book out four to six weeks in advance. Some restaurants close for a week to ten days. Some tailors and small shops close for two weeks. Hoi An itself — being a tourist town — stays more open than smaller towns, but the texture of the place shifts noticeably to a quieter, more domestic mood.
Should you visit Vietnam at Tết? It is a question we get often. The honest answer: visit during the week before Tết to see the preparation — flower markets, calligraphy stalls, the city in motion — and stay through the first day or two for the cultural experience. Stay at a hotel rather than try to find dinner; many places eat at home. Don't plan major travel on lunar 1/1 itself.
One of central Vietnam's great Buddhist festivals happens just over the river in Đà Nẵng. The Quán Thế Âm Festival at the Marble Mountains (Ngũ Hành Sơn) honours the Bodhisattva of compassion on the 19th day of the second lunar month — a National Intangible Cultural Heritage event of processions, Buddhist rites and hoa đăng lantern-floating. In the lunar year Đinh Mùi that day is Friday 26 March 2027 (the second lunar month opens on 8 March 2027); the programme usually opens two days earlier, so expect 24–26 March. Đà Nẵng's official 2027 programme is not yet published — we update the festival page as soon as it is. The Marble Mountains are about 30–40 minutes from Hội An.
At the hotel: the Marble Mountains make an easy half-day run from our riverside base on the quiet Thu Bồn south bank — out to the caves and cliff-top pagodas in the morning, back to the river for a slow afternoon.
For about two weeks each April the sưa trees of Hương Trà village, on the southern edge of what used to be Tam Kỳ, flower all at once and turn the lanes gold. Nine of them are recognised Vietnam Heritage Trees. Since 2017 the city has run a festival around the bloom — now called Sắc sưa Hương Trà – Đà Nẵng after the 2025 provincial merger, which is why most English pages still file it under a province that no longer exists. The 2026 edition ran 24–26 April; 2027 dates usually appear in February or March.
The flowers do not wait for the programme: the bloom is weather-dependent and often peaks earlier in the month than the festival weekend. Our full guide to sưa season and the Hương Trà festival covers the bloom window, what the tree actually is (it is not crape myrtle), and how to make the day trip from Hội An.
At the hotel: Hương Trà is about 55 km south — a little over an hour by car. Reception can arrange the run, and if you are staying with us in April we will tell you honestly, the week before, whether the flowers are actually out.
Hùng Kings' Festival 2027 falls on Friday 16 April 2027, the 10th day of the 3rd lunar month.
Planning a trip around this? See dates at our quiet riverside hotel on the Thu Bồn. Check availability →
Giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương honours the legendary Hùng Kings, founders of the first Vietnamese state (Văn Lang) some 4,000 years ago. The main ceremony is held at the Hùng Temple complex in Phú Thọ Province, north of Hanoi. It has been a public holiday since 2007.
At the hotel: A long weekend for Vietnamese travellers. Domestic tourism in Hội An rises. International impact is small.
Phật Đản 2027 falls on Thursday 20 May 2027, rằm tháng Tư — the full moon of the fourth lunar month. The Vesak week (Tuần lễ Phật Đản) runs from lunar 8/4 to 15/4, Thursday 13 to Thursday 20 May 2027, and Hội An's lantern night is the evening before the main day, Wednesday 19 May. Full detail, including tắm Phật and what is open, is in our Phật Đản 2027 guide.
Two dates circulate for this festival, and both are real. The older East Asian tradition dates the Buddha's birth to the 8th day of the fourth lunar month, which is why some English pages give 13 May 2027. The Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, however, holds the official ceremony on the full moon, 15/4: its 2026 guidance set the Vesak week at lunar 8/4–15/4 (24–31 May 2026) with the official ceremony on 15/4, 31 May 2026. We use the Sangha's date. (An earlier version of this page gave 24 May 2026 as the 2026 ceremony day; that was the opening of Vesak week, not the ceremony — corrected 12 September 2026.)
What it looks like: pagodas across Vietnam decorate with lanterns and flowers; temples hold processions and chanting; many Buddhist families eat vegetarian for the day. Hội An's pagodas — Phước Lâm, Chúc Thánh, Vạn Đức — host evening services worth attending.
At the hotel: No public-holiday closures. The town runs normally. Pagoda visits are quieter and more reverent than the lantern festivals. We can suggest a respectful evening route on request.
Each summer, Đà Nẵng's Hàn River hosts DIFF, the International Fireworks Festival — national teams competing across several Saturday nights with themed, music-synchronised displays. It is the largest pyrotechnic event in the region. The full night-by-night schedule and the case for seeing it as a day trip are in our DIFF schedule guide; for the background, see what DIFF actually is.
At the hotel: a DIFF night is loud and crowded by design. From Hội An you get the spectacle and then a roughly 40-minute drive back to a quiet riverside night on the Thu Bồn — the recovery the city centre can't offer.
Vu Lan 2027 falls on Monday 16 August 2027, the 15th day of the 7th lunar month. (In 2026 it fell on Thursday 27 August.) Our Vu Lan 2027 guide covers the pagoda services and the lantern night the evening before.
Vu Lan is Vietnam's most important festival of remembrance and filial piety. Its rituals draw on the Buddhist Ullambana tradition and on Vietnamese ancestor veneration. Adults wear a rose pinned to the chest at pagoda services — red if their mother is still living, white if their mother has passed. Families visit graves, prepare offerings, and read the names of departed ancestors.
At the hotel: Pagodas are full. The Old Town is more reflective than festive that night. The lantern festival on Sunday 15 August 2027 (the night before) is bigger than the average month because Vu Lan visitors are already in town.
*Vietnam's National Day, Quốc Khánh, falls on a fixed Gregorian date: 2 September.* It marks the date in 1945 when Hồ Chí Minh read the Declaration of Independence in Hanoi's Ba Đình Square.
National Day is a public holiday and one of the country's main domestic-travel weekends. Hội An sees a surge of Vietnamese visitors, especially from Hanoi and Saigon. The Old Town is decorated with red flags and yellow stars. Hotels often run at peak occupancy on the closest weekend.
At the hotel: Domestic-traveller-heavy. Restaurants fill earlier. Booking ahead is essential for early September.
A few notes for travellers planning around Vietnamese festivals:
For more on the lunar rhythm of Hội An — the moon phases, river light, why nights feel different at the 14th — see our moon page. For month-by-month weather and travel windows, see our 12-month Vietnam calendar. For the broader rhythm of Hội An's quieter side, see our Cẩm Nam, Cẩm Kim, Cẩm Thanh guide.
Festival nights fill Hội An's hotels first and its riverside last. We are Nghê Prana, a 23-room riverside hotel on the south bank of the Thu Bồn — ten minutes by bicycle from the Old Town, and far enough from it that you can sleep after the lanterns have gone out. See the rooms, or ask us which nights are still open.
Festivals are how Vietnam keeps time. If you visit on a festival day, the country shows you something it doesn't show on ordinary Tuesdays. If you visit on an ordinary Tuesday, you get the country at its working baseline. Both are worth knowing.
23 rooms on the quiet south bank of the Thu Bồn River, ten minutes by bicycle from the Ancient Town and a world from its noise.
Book your stayContinue at Nghê Prana
Ready to Sleep Better?
Every room at Nghê Prana is designed around the science of sleep. Blackout curtains, nightly aromatherapy turndown, and riverside quiet — experience what real rest feels like.
View Our RoomsYour Stay Awaits
Riverside hotel rooms on the Thu Bồn, ten minutes by bicycle from the Ancient Town. Whether it's one night between Hue and Da Nang or a full week of doing nothing — we kept your room quiet.
Free cancellation · Direct from the family who built the hotel
Save 15% booking directly via our website
WhatsApp
Zalo