7 of Vietnam’s most spectacular festivals
From nationwide celebrations like Vietnamese New Year to the UNESCO-recognised Giong Festival of Phu Dong Temple, these are the dates to add into your calendar
Dragons whirling through the streets, two-thousand drone light dances, streetside woks sizzling with seasonal food, tiny alleys hung with thousands of paper lanterns… Vietnam’s festivals are a delight, and they offer pegs around which you can hang a trip to this wonderful country.
There’s something going on somewhere pretty much every month – from the New Year celebrations and spring flower festivals at the start of the year to the harvest in the northern mountains come September and October. But be sure to check the dates in advance, as festivals follow the lunar, rather than the Gregorian calendar.
While the official Vietnam tourism website has a full month by month run down, we’ve narrowed it down to seven of the best Vietnam festivals to check out this year.
Tet Nguyen Dan (Lunar New Year)
When: Late January or early February
Where: Nationwide
Tet Nguyen Dan, more commonly referred to as just Tet, is the official Vietnamese New Year, which follows the same lunar calendar as China.
Celebrations begin weeks in advance of the actual date, with cities and towns throughout the country creating lavish displays. Even small provincial capitals erupt in blazes of colour – in 2025, Tuy Hoa’s Tet Flower Street showcased 70,000 flower baskets covering 4,000 square metres. Hanoi’s is usually the most spectacular of all. This year, 2,000 drones painted the sky in the largest ever show used in a performance in Southeast Asia.
In Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyễn Huệ Street in District 1 is covered with millions of yellow Mai flower petals. The actual day of Tet, the first day of the Lunar New Year, is largely a quiet family affair, like Western Christmas. The country closes down, kids come home to receive gifts of ‘lucky money’ in red envelopes, everybody feasts on Banh Chung sticky rice cakes and pickled vegetables and families pay obeisance at the temple or church.
Read next: Everything you need to know about celebrating Tet, or Vietnam New Year
Hue Festival
When: Biennially in April
Where: Hue
Every two years Central Vietnam’s gorgeous old imperial Nguyen Dynasty capital hosts one of Southeast Asia’s richest cultural events – a kind of Eastern Edinburgh festival spread over a week, and mixing music, dance, performance and myriad exhibitions and events.
Performers from every corner of the world descend on Hue and the city’s historic buildings serve as back drop to everything from classical opera and Chinese dance to water puppet shows and traditional Vietnamese theatre. Art is on display everywhere – kid’s paintings, international photography, modernist sculpture and traditional craft. The festival highlight is a spectacular sound, light and firework display over the stately buildings of the old Forbidden Purple City.
Read next: Our guide to the best time to visit Vietnam, no matter your itinerary
Mid-autumn Festival (Tet Trung Thu)
When: 15th day of the eighth lunar month
Where: Nationwide
This ancient festival, rooted in celebrations dating back to 1000 BC in Shang Dynasty China, is one for the kids. You’ll see them laughing everywhere – dancing in the streets in gaudy masks or waving elaborately crafted paper toys shaped like mantises, shrimps, unicorns and fish. Families gather to watch whirling lion dances by day and to watch the rising full moon at night.
Small rural towns in like Ninh Binh and Phong Nha host lovely children’s lantern processions after which everyone downs enormous quantities of delicious Banh deo and bánh trung thu mooncakes (round pastries filled with savoury and sweet lotus seed fillings) which are on sale everywhere throughout Vietnam.
Read next: 9 of the best things to do in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Giong Festival
When: Third lunar month
Where: Phù Đổng, near Hanoi
The Giong Festival is of such uniquely Vietnamese cultural significance that it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It takes place on and around the lovely 11th century Phù Đổng Temple near Hanoi, whose porcelain-covered gabled pagodas sit in leafy gardens around a series of artificial lakes.
Phù Đổng was built by King Ly Thai To to honour the memory of Giong, one of four semi-mythical national heroes who has the same status as a Western patron saint. Giong reputedly fought off a Chinese invasion single-handedly; dressed in steel armour and riding a steel horse. Exhausted from his battle he then rode to the summit of nearby mountain and was transfigured into the heavens.
During the festival, locals dressed in period costume process reverently through the streets before re-enacting Giong’s battle and then descending into revelry with tugs of war, duck catching races and all manner of rural shenanigans.
Read next: 9 of the best things to do in Hanoi
Hoi An Lantern Festival
When: 14th day of each lunar month
Where: Hoi An
The beauty of the Hoi An Lantern Festival is that it takes place every month. A visual feast, try and be in the town centre after dark when the electric lights are switched off and the little streets of terracotta cottages and dragon-gable temples glow under the light of thousands of paper lanterns – in every colour you can imagine. Lantern-balloons rise into the air and the mirror-calm water of the tiny Thu Bon river glistens with hundreds of candle-filled model boats and rafts, each of which is launched with a wish by Hoi An families. There are dance shows, too, and stalls sell all manner of cakes and sweet treats.
Read next: The best places to stay in Hoi An, Vietnam
Ba Na Hills Flower Festival
When: January to March
Where: Ba Na Hills, Da Nang
This festival is one of the easiest for visitors to attend, as it takes place over three months in the Ba Na Europe theme park, set in the cool hills above Danang City, a hub for tourists visiting Hue or Hoi An.
There are cultural and culinary events but the focus is on the flowers – grown in vast and elaborate displays around Ba Na’s faux-French palaces and neoclassical colonnades, which feel as kitschy Disneyland pagoda. The flowers, however, are extraordinary. The displays begin with 60 varieties of tulips symbolising spring and grown in beds that burst with exuberant colours and offset the bizarre buildings, the tinkling fountains and a huge glitzy golden dome that sparkles in the sun. After the tulips, sunflowers bloom in acres of buttery yellow, to symbolise summer, and then a thousand rose bushes, in a myriad of creams, pinks and reds, herald winter.
Read next: 7 of the best things to do in Da Nang
The Buckwheat Flower festival
When: November
Where: Ha Giang
Plunging valleys cut by silvery rivers and stepped with rice fields, towering ridges sheltering tiny villages, local Hmong people walking to market in traditional red sarongs and woven smocks… Ha Giang in the far north of Vietnam is worth visiting at any time. But in November it’s at its most beautiful, with the rice golden in the fields and ripe for harvest and shimmering meadows of creamy pink Tam Giác Mạch (buckwheat) flowers brightening the valleys.
The festival itself focuses on Dong Van village where locals gather to celebrate with art shows, singing competitions and rural folk games; and proffer all manner of food made from buckwheat including delicious Thang Co (buckwheat pancakes). But it’s the sight of those flower-filled valleys and golden fields of waving rice grass that really bring this festival to life.
