Events & Festivals
Hoi An Lantern Festival 2026–2027: Every Full Moon Date, Plus December’s First International Festival
Hoi An Lantern Festival 2026–2027: Every Full Moon Date, Plus December’s First International Festival
The Hoi An lantern festival happens on the 14th night of every lunar month. Here is every date through December 2027, the new International Lantern Festival on 3–6 December 2026, and how to plan the night.
Once a lunar month the Old Town turns its electric lights down and runs on silk lanterns and candles. Houses switch off their signs, families set out candles on the doorstep, and the Hoai River fills with small paper lotus lights. Locals call it Đêm phố cổ, the Old Town Night. Most visitors call it the Hoi An lantern festival, and it has been happening every month since 1998, a year before UNESCO listed the town.
We rent bikes at 84 Phan Chau Trinh, a few minutes’ walk from the river, and the question we hear most at the counter in autumn is simple: which night is it, and is it worth changing our plans for? This page answers both. The dates below are converted from the Vietnamese lunar calendar (Hanoi time, which occasionally differs by a day from Chinese calendars online), and the 2026 list was checked against two fixed anchors: Tet on 17 February and Mid-Autumn on 25 September.
- Every Hoi An lantern festival date, October 2026 to December 2027
- The first Hoi An International Lantern Festival, 3–6 December 2026
- Which lantern night to pick
- What happens hour by hour
- What it costs and whether you need a ticket
- Getting there and the parking problem
- Lantern nights in the rainy and flood season
- Local tips for a better night
- Lanterns every night: what the festival adds
- Frequently asked questions
Every Hoi An lantern festival date, October 2026 to December 2027
The Hoi An lantern festival falls on the 14th day of each lunar month, the eve of the full moon, not on the full moon itself. That is the detail most calendars online get wrong: they list the 15th and send people a day late. A lunar month is about 29.5 days, so the date slips roughly a day earlier each month and about eleven days earlier each year, until a leap month pulls it forward again.
| Date | Lunar date | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Fri 23 October 2026 | 14/9 | Next one up. Start of the flood season; check the forecast |
| Sun 22 November 2026 | 14/10 | Weekend, but the wettest month; quiet and atmospheric |
| Tue 22 December 2026 | 14/11 | Cool and drier; international festival installations still up |
| Thu 21 January 2027 | 14/12 | Last of the Year of the Horse; installations still up |
| Fri 19 February 2027 | 14/1 | Eve of Nguyen Tieu, the first full moon after Tet (6 Feb). The biggest lantern night of the year |
| Sun 21 March 2027 | 14/2 | Dry, mild and a Sunday: Da Nang day-trippers arrive |
| Tue 20 April 2027 | 14/3 | Ten days before the 30 April holiday; good weather |
| Wed 19 May 2027 | 14/4 | Eve of Buddha’s Birthday (Thu 20 May); pagodas busy |
| Fri 18 June 2027 | 14/5 | Hot; summer holidays begin for Vietnamese families |
| Sat 17 July 2027 | 14/6 | Saturday in peak summer: the most crowded combination |
| Sun 15 August 2027 | 14/7 | Eve of Vu Lan (Mon 16 Aug), a major Buddhist festival |
| Tue 14 September 2027 | 14/8 | Eve of Mid-Autumn (Wed 15 Sep): lion dances, children with star lanterns |
| Wed 13 October 2027 | 14/9 | Rainy season begins |
| Thu 11 November 2027 | 14/10 | Wettest month of the year |
| Sat 11 December 2027 | 14/11 | Weekend, cooler, the last of 2027 |
2026 had thirteen lantern nights, not twelve: twelve and a third lunar months fit into a solar year, and in 2026 the first two (January and February) still belonged to the previous lunar year. Ten of them have already passed. For the record, and for anyone matching old photos to dates:
| 2026 lantern nights already held | Lunar date |
|---|---|
| Fri 2 Jan · Sun 1 Feb | 14/11 · 14/12 (previous lunar year) |
| Mon 2 Mar · Wed 1 Apr · Thu 30 Apr | 14/1 · 14/2 · 14/3 |
| Sat 30 May · Sun 28 Jun · Mon 27 Jul | 14/4 · 14/5 · 14/6 |
| Wed 26 Aug · Thu 24 Sep | 14/7 · 14/8 (Mid-Autumn eve) |
Any Vietnamese calendar app shows the lunar date in small print under the solar one. Look for a small “14” under the day. Searching “lịch âm” on Google gives the same thing. Hotels in the Old Town also post the month’s date at reception.
The first Hoi An International Lantern Festival, 3–6 December 2026
This is the biggest change to the lantern calendar in years. Da Nang City, which now governs Hoi An after the July 2025 merger, has approved the first Hoi An International Lantern Festival, themed “Hoi An – Colours of Heritage”. The dates are not random: 4 December is the anniversary of Hoi An’s UNESCO listing in 1999, so the festival marks the 27th year.
- Dates: Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 December 2026
- Where: Hoai River Square, the An Hoi sculpture garden, along the Hoai River and several streets of the Old Town
- Scale: around fifteen large art-lantern installations
- Opening night: a performance staged on the riverbank and on the water
- Hands-on: a lantern-making area and a Hoi An food zone
- Also planned: a lantern and recycled-art exhibition, a night lantern procession, traditional music and ao dai shows, a talk on Hoi An handicrafts, a photography contest and a lantern-pattern design competition
The art installations are due to stay up until Tet Nguyen Tieu 2027, the first full moon of the new lunar year, which falls on Saturday 20 February 2027. That puts three ordinary lantern nights inside the display window: 22 December, 21 January and 19 February. If you cannot make the four festival days, those three nights give you the installations and the candle-lit Old Town together, with fewer people than opening weekend.
Note that 3–6 December sits between two monthly lantern nights (22 November and 22 December), so the festival is its own event, not an upgraded full moon. The programme above comes from the city plan reported by Tuoi Tre on 31 July 2026 and an update in Da Nang’s city newspaper in mid-September. First editions change: confirm the opening-night time a week ahead.
The same city plan also ran Hoi An Creative Week from 28 August to 2 September 2026, with craft-village talks, workshops and a digital “creative map” of the town. It is over for this year; we will add the 2027 dates when they are announced.
The December festival lasts four days. The lanterns it leaves behind last eleven weeks, and that is the part most visitors will never hear about.
Which lantern night to pick
The fifteen nights in the table are not the same experience. If your dates are flexible, this is how we would rank the next year of the Hoi An lantern festival, from the counter’s point of view rather than a brochure’s.
| Pick | Night | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The full spectacle | Fri 19 Feb 2027 | Nguyen Tieu eve, the biggest lantern night of the year, with the festival installations still standing. Shoulder-to-shoulder after 19:00. |
| Best balance | Tue 22 Dec 2026 or Thu 21 Jan 2027 | Installations up, dry-ish weather, a weekday. Our first recommendation. |
| The new event | 3–6 Dec 2026 | Opening night and the procession. Not a monthly lantern night, but fifteen large art installations around the river. |
| Quiet and moody | Fri 23 Oct or Sun 22 Nov 2026 | Rainy season: wet stone reflecting lanterns, fewer people, better photos. Bring a poncho and a backup plan. |
| With children | Tue 14 Sep 2027 | Mid-Autumn eve: lion dance drums in every street and kids carrying star lanterns. |
| Avoid if you hate crowds | Sat 17 Jul and Sun 15 Aug 2027 | Weekend plus summer holidays plus the Da Nang crowd. |
A practical rule we give guests: a weekday lantern night is busy with people already staying in Hoi An; a weekend one adds everyone riding in from Da Nang after work. On a Friday or Saturday the An Hoi Bridge can take ten minutes to cross between 19:00 and 20:00.
What happens hour by hour
There is no stage, no gate and no single start time. The Hoi An lantern festival is the whole Old Town changing mood for an evening, so the useful question is not “when does it start” but “what is happening at each hour”.
| Time | What is happening | Where to be |
|---|---|---|
| 15:00 | Barriers go up: the Old Town core becomes a walking zone (as on every day) | Park outside the core before this if you are going in early |
| 16:30–17:30 | Vendors hang and light lanterns; boat owners start touting | Tran Phu and Nguyen Thai Hoc for photos without crowds; agree a boat price now |
| 17:30 | The Phan Chau Trinh barrier closes the street outside our shop to traffic | Lots on the outer ring fill from here |
| about 18:00 | Houses and shops in the core switch off signs and electric lights | The riverbank on Bach Dang for the “blue hour” light |
| 18:30–21:00 | Folk music, poetry, bai choi singing games; the river fills with candle lights | An Hoi side and the sculpture garden for the shows; An Hoi Bridge for the river view |
| 21:00–21:30 | Shows end; barriers come down (21:00 in winter, 21:30 in summer) | Back to your bike |
| After 22:00 | Lights come back on, the crowd drains away quickly | The quietest walk of the night |
Exact show times shift from month to month and on special nights. On Mid-Autumn eve 2026, for example, the heritage programme ran 18:30–21:00. If one specific performance matters to you, ask your hotel that afternoon.
What it costs and whether you need a ticket
Walking around on lantern night is free. There is no festival ticket, no wristband and no gate.
| Item | Typical price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Walking the Old Town | Free | Streets, riverbank and An Hoi Bridge |
| Heritage sites | 20,000₫ per site | Since 10 August 2026, per person per site you enter (old house, assembly hall, Covered Bridge). Most close before the lanterns come on |
| Floating candle lantern | 5,000–20,000₫ each | Cheaper from sellers on the bank than once you are on a boat |
| Hoai River boat | 100,000–200,000₫ per boat | City-printed tickets: 150,000₫ for 1–3 people, 200,000₫ for 4–5. Rises on busy nights |
| Motorbike parking | 5,000–10,000₫ | Often more on festival nights |
First, boats: on a packed night the first price at the water’s edge can be double what you pay twenty metres along. Agree the number of people, the minutes and whether it is per boat before you step in. Second, lanterns sold in bundles. One per person is the custom. If someone insists on a set of ten, walk on; there is a seller every few steps.
Want to make your own lantern before you float one? Our guide to the Hoi An lantern making class lists the workshops and what they cost. And if you would rather have someone else sort out the boat and the timing, tours and experiences in Hoi An on GetYourGuide include evening river trips with free cancellation up to a day ahead. We do not run boats or tours ourselves.
Getting there and the parking problem
This is where most visitors lose an hour. The Old Town core is a walking zone from 15:00 every day, not only on lantern nights, and on a lantern night the lots around it fill before dark. Ride in at 18:30 and you will be turned back at a barrier and then hunt for a space with everyone else.
- Arrive before 17:00. Park while there is still daylight and space, then walk in. This one decision saves the most time.
- Park on the outer ring. Look along Hai Ba Trung, Ly Thuong Kiet, Tran Hung Dao and the night-market lots on the An Hoi side rather than heading for Tran Phu. Our guide to Old Town vehicle restriction hours lists every barrier.
- Do not bring a car. Car parking near the centre on a lantern night is close to hopeless. Leave it at the hotel.
- From An Bang or Cua Dai beach: 10–15 minutes by scooter. Leave by 16:30.
- From Da Nang: about 27 km from the Dragon Bridge, 45–60 minutes. Set off by 15:30 if you want to park calmly and eat before the lights go down.
Lantern nights in the rainy and flood season
Two of the next three Hoi An lantern festival nights, 23 October and 22 November, fall in central Vietnam’s flood season, and that deserves a plain warning. Bach Dang, the riverside street where most of the candle-floating happens, is the first street to go under when the Thu Bon rises. On 29 October 2025 the water passed the record set in 1964, and people moved around the Old Town by boat.
- Rain alone does not cancel anything. Light rain thins the crowd and makes the wet stone reflect the lanterns. A cheap poncho beats an umbrella in a packed street.
- A flood warning does. When the river is high, Bach Dang is closed by water level, not by the clock, and the boats stop. Check the forecast two or three days ahead.
- After the water drops the riverbank usually reopens within a day or two, with mud on the road. Wear shoes that can get wet.
- On a bike in the rain, do not ride through water deeper than the wheel hub. Every bike we rent comes with raincoats.
More on which streets flood first, and when, in our Hoi An flood season guide.
Local tips for a better night
- Eat before 18:00, or after 20:30. Restaurants in the core fill the moment the lights go down and the kitchen slows to a crawl.
- Cross to the An Hoi side. The view back across the river is better and the crowd thinner than on the Old Town bank.
- Bring small notes. Lantern sellers and boat owners rarely take cards, and nobody has change for 500,000₫.
- Walk one street back from the river. Nguyen Thai Hoc and the alleys off it hold the atmosphere without the crush. Our guide to the hidden alleys of Hoi An has a route.
- Do not release sky lanterns. They are a fire risk in a wooden heritage town and not part of this festival. River candles are the tradition here.
- Stay past 22:00 if you can. When the electric lights return and the crowd drains away, the last hour is the Old Town most visitors never see.
The lantern night is also the busiest evening of the month on the river. For boats, viewpoints and the best minutes after sunset, read our guide to the Hoai River at night.
Lanterns every night: what the festival adds
Many visitors plan a whole trip around one date, arrive, and find the Old Town hung with lanterns every evening of the year. So it is worth being clear about what the monthly festival actually adds.
| Any ordinary night | Lantern night (14th lunar day) | |
|---|---|---|
| Lanterns lit | Yes, all year | Yes |
| Electric lights and signs | On | Mostly off from about 18:00 |
| Candles on the river | Some, sold to visitors | Hundreds, including local families |
| Folk music and bai choi | Occasional | Scheduled programme |
| Offerings and incense on family altars | No | Yes: it is the eve of the full moon |
| Crowds | Busy | Considerably busier |
The honest summary: the difference is the darkness, not the lanterns. Without electric light competing, the silk lanterns become the only light source and the whole town shifts colour. It is worth bending a plan for, but if your dates do not line up, you are not missing the lanterns themselves. Go on an ordinary night, go late, and after about 21:30 the Old Town is arguably calmer than lantern night at its peak. The lantern street on Nguyen Phuc Chu is lit every evening.
Beat the lantern-night parking scramble
Arrive early, park on the outer ring, walk in. With your own wheels you pick the timing instead of the traffic. Anh Khoa is at 84 Phan Chau Trinh: scooters, electric bikes and bicycles by the day, two helmets and raincoats with every bike, delivery to your hotel and a roadside line that answers 24/7.
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Rent a 50cc Bike in Hoi An Today!Hoi An lantern festival: frequently asked questions
When is the next Hoi An lantern festival?
The next lantern night is Friday 23 October 2026, then Sunday 22 November and Tuesday 22 December 2026. In 2027 the dates are 21 January, 19 February, 21 March, 20 April, 19 May, 18 June, 17 July, 15 August, 14 September, 13 October, 11 November and 11 December.
Is the Hoi An lantern festival on the full moon or the day before?
The day before. It falls on the 14th day of each lunar month, the eve of the full moon. Calendars that list the 15th send people a day late.
Is there an international lantern festival in Hoi An in 2026?
Yes. The first Hoi An International Lantern Festival runs from 3 to 6 December 2026 around the Hoai River Square, the An Hoi sculpture garden, the Hoai River and several Old Town streets, with around fifteen large lantern installations, an opening show on the water and a lantern-making area.
How long will the international festival lanterns stay up?
The art installations are planned to stay until Tet Nguyen Tieu 2027, the first full moon after Lunar New Year, on 20 February 2027. The lantern nights of 22 December, 21 January and 19 February all fall inside that window.
Do you need a ticket for the Hoi An lantern festival?
No. Walking the Old Town on a lantern night is free. Since 10 August 2026 you pay 20,000₫ per person only for each heritage site you go inside, such as an old house or assembly hall. Boats and floating lanterns are paid separately.
What time does the Hoi An lantern festival start?
Lanterns are lit from about 16:30, houses and shops in the core switch off electric lights from about 18:00, and the folk music, poetry and bai choi programme usually runs from about 18:30 to 21:00. After 22:00 the lights come back on and the crowd thins quickly.
How much does it cost to float a lantern or take a boat?
A floating candle lantern costs about 5,000 to 20,000₫. A boat on the Hoai River is usually 100,000 to 200,000₫ per boat; the city-printed tickets are 150,000₫ for one to three people and 200,000₫ for four to five. Agree the price before boarding.
Which lantern night is the best one to visit?
For the full spectacle, Friday 19 February 2027, the eve of Nguyen Tieu, with the December installations still up. For the best balance of atmosphere and space, a weekday such as 22 December 2026 or 21 January 2027. October and November nights are quieter but fall in the flood season.
More on the river itself in our guide to the Hoai River at night; for the once-a-year festival in September, see Mid-Autumn Festival in Hoi An. Reading in Vietnamese? Ý nghĩa thả đèn hoa đăng ở Hội An has the lantern-night calendar in Vietnamese.
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