Sưa Flower Season in Hương Trà (Tam Kỳ): Vietnam's Golden Fortnight — Dates, Bloom Window & How to See It from Hoi An

For about two weeks each April, the sưa trees of Hương Trà village drop their leaves, flower all at once, and turn a few streets on the edge of Tam Kỳ completely gold. Then the petals fall and the streets go gold a second time, underfoot. Nine of the trees are protected as Vietnam Heritage Trees. Since 2017 there has been a festival built around the bloom. And almost every English-language page describing it gets the tree wrong.

TL;DR — Sưa season in Hương Trà runs roughly early to mid April, lasts about two weeks, and is weather-dependent — the flowers do not wait for the festival programme. The 2026 festival, "Sắc sưa Hương Trà – Đà Nẵng", ran 24–26 April 2026 with more than 25 activities. The 2027 dates are not yet published; they usually appear in February or March. Hương Trà is about 55 km south of Hội An, a little over an hour by car. Nine of its sưa trees were recognised as Cây Di sản Việt Nam (Vietnam Heritage Trees) on 5 April 2024.

The tree is not crape myrtle. It is also not the rosewood.

This matters more than a pedantic footnote, because it is the single most repeated error in English about this place.

Several English pages about the Tam Kỳ bloom are machine translations of Vietnamese articles, and they render sưa as crape myrtle. Crape myrtle is Lagerstroemia — in Vietnamese, bằng lăng — and in central Vietnam it flowers purple, in summer. It is not this tree and it is not this season.

The second error is subtler and appears in better-informed writing. Sưa is used in Vietnam for more than one species. In the north, sưa đỏ is Dalbergia tonkinensis — the valuable rosewood that makes headlines when a single tree is stolen. Its flowers are white.

The tree that turns Hương Trà gold is neither. It is *Pterocarpus indicus* Willd. — known in Vietnamese as giáng hương ấn, and locally as sưa vàng, the yellow sưa. It belongs to the pea family, Fabaceae, and its flowers are a bright, faintly fragrant yellow. If a page tells you the yellow blossom of Tam Kỳ is Dalbergia tonkinensis, it has merged two different trees.

The nine Heritage Trees

On 5 April 2024, nine of the old sưa trees in Hương Trà were formally recognised as Cây Di sản Việt Nam — Vietnam Heritage Trees — by the Vietnam Association for Conservation of Nature and Environment. Vietnamese reporting on the recognition puts the trees at roughly 100 to 150 years old.

You will see "over 200 years" repeated in some write-ups. The sources close to the 2024 recognition do not support it. We have used the figure the recognition documents and contemporary Vietnamese press reports give.

The Cây Di sản programme is worth understanding on its own terms: it is a national register that gives individual old or culturally significant trees formal protected status, which in a country with an active illegal-timber problem is not a ceremonial gesture. The Hương Trà grove is one of the more photogenic entries on it.

The name changed, and most English pages have not noticed

Until 2025, this was a Tam Kỳ event in Quảng Nam province — and the English index still describes it that way, in a province that no longer exists in that form.

In 2025 Quảng Nam was merged into the city of Đà Nẵng. Tam Kỳ's wards were reorganised, and the village now sits in Hương Trà Ward, Đà Nẵng. The festival was rebranded accordingly: it is now officially "Sắc sưa Hương Trà – Đà Nẵng", and that is the name under which the city publishes its programme.

Practically: search in Vietnamese for lễ hội Sắc sưa Hương Trà rather than Tam Kỳ mùa hoa sưa, and check danang.gov.vn rather than a Quảng Nam provincial site, which is where the old English pages still point.

The bloom and the festival are two different things

This is the part no English page tells you, and it is the part that decides whether your trip works.

The festival is a scheduled municipal programme with a fixed weekend. The bloom is a biological event that answers to weather. They overlap in a normal year. They do not always align, and the flowers are the reason you came.

Sưa in central Vietnam typically flowers from early to mid April, holding for roughly two weeks from first opening to the last petals down. A hot dry spell can pull it forward; an unsettled, wet start to April can push it back or make it patchy. In 2026 the festival ran 24–26 April, which is at the late end of a typical bloom — meaning some visitors that weekend saw carpet rather than canopy.

Will I catch it?

An honest framework rather than a promise:

If you want the flowers, target the second week of April and be prepared to move your date by a few days at short notice. Ask locally in the days beforehand — Vietnamese Facebook pages for Hương Trà post bloom photos in near-real time, and they are a far better signal than any published forecast.

If you want the festival, go on the programme weekend and treat the flowers as a bonus. You will get bài chòi singing, boat racing, tandem bicycles under the trees, áo dài shows, a trail run and a food market — a genuine local event rather than a staged one.

If you want both, you need a year where they coincide and a little luck. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What happened in 2026

The 2026 edition ran 24–26 April at the Hương Trà ecological village, with a programme of more than 25 activities published by the city. Recurring elements across recent years include hot-air balloon viewing over the blossom, tandem cycling along the tree-lined lanes, a trail run, bài chòi folk singing, boat racing on the Tam Kỳ river, áo dài presentations and a night market.

2027: dates are not announced at the time of writing. Based on the recent pattern they will be published in February or March 2027 for a late-April weekend. We will update this page when they appear.

Getting there from Hội An

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Hương Trà is roughly 55 km south of Hội An — about an hour to an hour and a quarter by car, depending on whether you take the inland route or the coast.

By car. The straightforward option, and the one worth taking if you are chasing a bloom window and want to keep the day flexible. Reception can arrange a car; the run south is easy driving. Ask for a return time rather than a one-way, because Hương Trà is a village, not a transport hub.

By motorbike. Practical for confident riders and genuinely pleasant along the coastal road, which runs beside the sea for much of the way before turning inland at Tam Kỳ.

By bicycle. Only for strong riders — 55 km each way in April heat is a serious day, and there is no shade for long stretches. Attractive on paper, punishing in practice.

Golden April: what else is happening

April is the best-value fortnight in the central Vietnam calendar, and the sưa bloom is one of three things happening at once:

Cù Lao Chàm reopens. The island ferries resume properly as the sea calms after the winter swell, and April is one of the clearest months of the year for the water there. See our Cù Lao Chàm day-trip guide.

The Quán Thế Âm festival falls in the same window at the Marble Mountains, between Hội An and Đà Nẵng — a large Buddhist festival on the direct route north.

The weather turns. April sits in the dry, bright part of the Hội An year before the real heat of June. For a month-by-month read, see our best time to visit Hội An guide.

Chained together, those three make a single strong week: the island on the clear days, the bloom on a day trip south, the Marble Mountains on the way to the airport.

Practical notes

Go early. The light is best on the flowers before about nine, and the village lanes are quiet. By late morning on a festival weekend there are crowds.

It is a working village. The trees stand along ordinary residential lanes, in front of people's houses. Photograph the trees, not through anyone's front door.

Bring cash. Village stalls and the festival market are cash economies.

Nothing here needs a ticket. The bloom is free and public. The festival programme is free to attend; individual activities may charge.

Where we sit

We are a riverside hotel in Hội An, on the Thu Bồn — an hour north of the trees. We do not run tours to Hương Trà and we are not pretending this is on our doorstep. What we can do is arrange the car, tell you honestly the week before whether the flowers are actually out, and point you at the Vietnamese sources that will tell you first.

If you are planning an April stay and want the bloom in it, say so when you book and we will keep an eye on it for you.