Most lists of Hoi An festivals were written once and copied ever since. They repeat the same ten names, leave out the dates, and quietly include things that are not festivals at all — the night market runs every evening of the year. This guide is rebuilt from the town’s own heritage office, Da Nang City announcements and what we see from our shop on Phan Chau Trinh, a block from the pedestrian zone, where the lanterns go up in front of the door each month.

Two things changed recently. Since 1 July 2025, Hoi An is no longer a town in Quang Nam but a set of wards inside Da Nang City, so festivals are now announced by Da Nang. And in December 2026 the city stages the first ever Hoi An International Lantern Festival. Both are in the calendar below.

Hoi An festivals at a glance: the next 12 months

Traditional Hoi An festivals follow the lunar calendar, which runs 11 days shorter than the Western year. A lantern night in late September this year falls in mid-September next year. The table converts every lunar date for you. Dates for 2027 are calculated from the lunar calendar; the organisers publish exact programmes a few weeks before each event.

Every month: the full moon lantern night

1. Hoi An Lantern Night. On the 14th day of each lunar month, the eve of the full moon, the Old Town switches off much of its electric light and runs on silk lanterns and candles instead. There is no stage and no ticket for the streets: families light offerings in front of shop houses, children sell paper candle boats on the Hoai River, and bai choi — a Central Vietnam folk game sung like bingo — starts up on Bach Dang street. It is the most reliable of them all because it happens twelve or thirteen times a year.

Walking is free from about 18:00 to 22:00. The ticket (120,000₫ for foreign visitors) only covers entry to three of the 21 heritage houses, temples and museums; the street itself is open. Three remaining nights in 2026: Friday 23 October (rainy season starts, fewer crowds), Sunday 22 November and Tuesday 22 December. For all thirteen 2026 dates and the Creative Week that followed the August one, see our Hoi An lantern festival dates guide.

The street is free. The river is where the money changes hands — a paper lantern boat, a lit candle, and a wish you are supposed to keep to yourself.

Spring: Tet, Cau Bong and Nguyen Tieu

The first lunar month holds three Hoi An festivals in fifteen days. For a visitor this is the richest fortnight of the year, and also the one where the most businesses close.

2. Tet Nguyen Dan (Lunar New Year)

Tet 2027 falls on Saturday 6 February. The week before, the Old Town is at its busiest: kumquat trees and peach blossom are carried home on the backs of motorbikes, and the market by the river sells banh tet leaves by the armful. The first three days are for family, so many small restaurants and tailors shut. The city has in past years paused the pedestrian-only hours around Tet — in 2026 from the 27th of the last lunar month to the 3rd of the new year — and posts separate traffic arrangements at the checkpoints.

3. Cau Bong at Tra Que village

On the 7th day of Tet (12 February 2027), Tra Que vegetable village holds Cau Bong — literally “praying for flowers”, meaning a good harvest. The village honours the founders who cleared the land more than 500 years ago, with incense, a procession between the plots, dragon dancing and friendly competitions among local families. It is small, local and in the morning. Tra Que is 3.2 km from our shop, a 9-minute ride; read our Tra Que village guide before you go.

4. Nguyen Tieu (first full moon)

The 15th day of the first lunar month (20 February 2027) is Nguyen Tieu, and in Hoi An it belongs to the Chinese community as much as the Vietnamese. Rites run at the Quan Cong temple, the Hoi An communal house and the Cantonese, Fujian and Teochew assembly halls, with Tuong opera on the evenings of the 14th and 15th and bai choi at the Nguyen Thai Hoc – Bach Dang corner. In February 2023, Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture added the Nguyen Tieu traditions of Hoi An to the national list of intangible cultural heritage. The Mid-Autumn festival here followed later the same year, so Hoi An now holds two festivals on that list.

The Fujian Assembly Hall is the busiest spot on the night. Go before 19:00 if you want to see the incense coils being lit rather than the back of a crowd.

Cau Ngu: the whale worship festival at Cua Dai

5. Cau Ngu. Fishing communities along the central coast treat the whale as a guardian spirit, Ong Ngu, who carries sailors home. In Hoi An the main festival is held at the Tieu Dien shrine in Cua Dai on the 15th and 16th of the second lunar month — 22 and 23 March in 2027. According to the Hoi An heritage management centre, it opens by welcoming the spirits on land and at sea, moves through ancestor rites and ends with the offering to the whale, followed by water puppets and dragon-boat racing in crews of twelve.

Cua Dai beach is 5.9 km from the Old Town, about 16 minutes by bike along Cua Dai road. This is one of the festivals where tourists are a small minority; dress as for a temple and ask before photographing the altar. Our Cua Dai beach guide covers parking.

The 7th lunar month: pottery, Long Chu and Vu Lan

6. Thanh Ha pottery ancestor day

Thanh Ha, a pottery village of nearly 500 years on the Thu Bon, honours the founders of its craft on the 9th and 10th of the 7th lunar month — in 2026 that was 21–22 August. The morning is for the rites at the village shrines; afterwards the lanes fill with wheel-throwing demonstrations, folk games and a pottery competition. Thanh Ha is 2.9 km from our shop, 7 minutes by bike. The workshops are open all year: see visiting Thanh Ha pottery village.

7. Long Chu and Vu Lan (15th of the 7th month)

The full moon of the 7th lunar month carries two rites on the same night — 16 August 2027. Vu Lan is the Buddhist day for honouring parents and feeding wandering souls: pagodas hold ceremonies, households set out food on the pavement, and paper lotus lanterns go onto the river. Long Chu is stranger. Riverside neighbourhoods build a dragon-shaped boat from bamboo and coloured paper, carry it through the streets to collect bad luck and illness, then set it alight and push it out towards the sea at nightfall. Heritage and travel sources date it to the 15th of the 7th month; each ward runs its own, so ask locally which evening yours leaves.

Mid-Autumn and the Thien Cau dance

8. Mid-Autumn (Tet Trung Thu). For children in Vietnam this is the big night of the year: star lanterns, mooncakes and drum troupes on every corner. In 2026 the festival is on Friday 25 September, and the eve on 24 September is also the monthly lantern night. What sets Hoi An apart is the Thien Cau — a “heavenly dog” dance older than the lion dance, which the Old Town kept when most of the country forgot it. Vietnam added Mid-Autumn in Hoi An to the national heritage list in 2023, with Thien Cau as its signature.

Where to stand, what the troupes are doing outside shops, and how Thien Cau differs from a lion: our full Mid-Autumn festival in Hoi An guide. In 2027 the date is Wednesday 15 September.

December: the first International Lantern Festival

9. Hoi An International Lantern Festival. This is new. Da Nang City will stage the first edition from 3 to 6 December 2026 under the theme “Hoi An – Colours of Heritage”, as reported by Tuoi Tre. The plan: an opening show on and around the Hoai River, about 15 large lantern installations across Hoai River Square, the An Hoi sculpture garden and the Old Town streets, lantern-making zones, a heritage food area, a night lantern procession and design and photo contests.

The detail most guides will miss: the installations are due to stay up until Nguyen Tieu 2027. If you cannot make early December, you can still see the big lanterns through Tet and up to 20 February 2027, and the 22 December lantern night follows the festival by just over two weeks.

New on the calendar: Creative Week, rice and beach festivals

10. The newer events. Alongside the traditional Hoi An festivals, the city has added fixed-date events that change each year. Hoi An Creative Week ran from 28 August to 2 September 2026, with craft village programmes and a GPS trail through the Old Town. The Hoi An Dong rice farming festival opened the year on 4 January 2026 at An My vegetable village with buffalo ploughing and a countryside market — see our rice farming festival guide. In summer, a string of beach festivals near Hoi An fills the coast from Da Nang to Tam Thanh.

What is not on this list: the Nguyen Hoang night market is lovely, but it opens every evening and is not a festival. If you want to make a lantern of your own on any night, the lantern-making class is the nearest thing to a year-round festival activity.

Getting to Hoi An festivals by motorbike

Half of these celebrations happen outside the Old Town — Tra Que, Thanh Ha, Cua Dai — and a bike is the easy way to reach them. The other half happen inside the pedestrian zone, where motorbikes are banned from 9:00 to 11:00 and from 15:00 until about 21:00–22:00 depending on the season, every day of the week. The pattern that works:

• Ride out in the day to village festivals: Tra Que 3.2 km, Thanh Ha 2.9 km, Cua Dai 5.9 km from the shop.
• Park at the edge by 17:00 on festival nights. The lots at Nguyen Hoang (night market side) and Hoai River Square charge 5,000–10,000₫ for a motorbike; prices can rise on big nights.
• Walk the last few hundred metres. Bicycles are allowed in the pedestrian zone, but on lantern nights you will be pushing, not riding.
• Keep your parking ticket photo. Every lot looks the same after dark.

For the full list of banned streets and the history of the scheme, see getting around Hoi An.

Hoi An festivals: frequently asked questions

Đọc bằng tiếng Việt: Top 15 lễ hội ở Hội An.

Updated September 2026. Dates for 2027 are converted from the lunar calendar and may shift if organisers change the programme. Festival details come from the Hoi An heritage management centre, Da Nang City announcements reported by Tuoi Tre (July 2026) and the Government news portal (February 2023). Distances measured with Google Maps from 84 Phan Chau Trinh. Parking prices are posted rates seen in mid-2026. Anh Khoa rents bikes and does not organise any of these festivals.