Vietnam public holidays: dates, blocks and what actually closes

This page answers one question: do your dates land on a holiday, and what does that cost you. Every date below comes from a government decision, not from last year's calendar shifted forward. How each holiday is actually celebrated lives in separate guides, linked from the calendar rows themselves.

How many public holidays Vietnam has, and who sets the dates

Twelve paid days a year. Until 2026 there were eleven, set by Article 112 of the 2019 Labour Code and unchanged since. The twelfth arrived through a separate instrument: National Assembly resolution on developing culture, passed on 24 April 2026 and in force from 1 July 2026.

Here is what the twelve are made of:

The 24 November date marks the first National Cultural Conference of 1946, chaired by Ho Chi Minh. For a visitor the more useful fact is that 2026 is the first year anyone actually gets the day off, so any calendar compiled before spring 2026 simply does not have it.

Then comes the part that trips people up. A calendar date and an actual day off rarely coincide here, because two shifting mechanisms are at work.

Nghỉ bù, substitution. A holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, so the next working day becomes the day off. Hung Kings' Commemoration Day landed on Sunday 26 April 2026, and the country rested on Monday the 27th.

Hoán đổi, swap. One working day is stranded between a holiday and a weekend, so it is made a day off and the nearest Saturday is made a working day instead. That is why 10 January and 22 August 2026 were ordinary working days in Vietnam despite being Saturdays.

The chain of command is short: the Ministry of Home Affairs proposes, the Prime Minister signs. This normally happens in October–December of the preceding year. Before that signature, any date you read is a draft, and Vietnamese media label it honestly as "đề xuất", a proposal.

Private companies run on their own version. An employer may split the five Tet days differently — three before the new year and two after, instead of the canonical one-and-four. The only hard rule is 30 days' notice. In practice this means your landlord, your bike mechanic and the owner of your usual coffee shop may all disappear on different days.

Vietnam public holidays in 2026: dates, blocks, substitutions

Vietnam had six holiday blocks in 2026. The longest ran nine days, over Tet; the shortest lasted three, in April. The holiday blocks add up to 29 days, or 26 after the three make-up Saturdays.

One row deserves its own paragraph, because most holiday listings skip it: make-up Saturdays. There were three in 2026 — 10 January, 22 August and 28 November. On those days government offices, banks and most companies work a full weekday. If you were saving an immigration errand for a Saturday on the theory that everything is shut anyway, you can walk straight into a working day.

Dates current as of 09/2026. The 2026 schedule is published by the Ministry of Home Affairs; the November block is still being confirmed.

One more planning detail worth internalising. The blocks around 30 April and 2 September almost always absorb a weekend on one or both sides, so "two public holidays" reliably means four or five non-working days. Read the weekday, not the date.

What has already passed and what is left in 2026

After the September block, 2026 holds two more events: the Mid-Autumn Festival on 25 September, which is a working day, and the November block around the 24th. Between them the country runs its normal schedule, with no mass closures from mid-September until late November.

The 29 August — 2 September 2026 holiday produced a record: 6.5 million visitors served, 18% up on the year before. Khánh Hòa province, which covers Nha Trang and Cam Ranh, took roughly 1.25 million visitors across the five days; Da Nang took 850 000, a 37% rise.

Five days off around National Day brought the tourism sector an estimated 6.5 million guests served, 18% more than in 2025. Three cities each cleared over 3,000 billion VND in tourism revenue — Vietnam Government Portal, 3 September 2026

September and October carry no holiday surprises at all. Banks open, offices process, prices sit where they normally sit. The Mid-Autumn Festival, Tết Trung thu, falls on 25 September and is not a day off. It does fill the streets with children carrying lanterns in the evening, and it makes every bakery in the country unapproachable for the week before. The full picture is in the guide to the Mid-Autumn Festival.

November is the one to watch if you have paperwork. If the swap is approved, banks and government offices close from 21 to 24 November and then work Saturday the 28th.

Vietnam public holidays 2027: confirmed dates and open questions

On 5 August 2026 the Ministry of Home Affairs submitted two options for Tet and one for National Day; the Prime Minister's decision is expected towards the end of the year. The lunar dates themselves are already fixed — they do not depend on anyone's signature.

The gap between the two Tet options is not cosmetic. Seven days, 4 to 10 February, puts the country back at its desks on Thursday the 11th. Ten days, 5 to 14 February, stretches the pause into the second half of the month — and anything you failed to settle before 4 February waits two weeks. The Ministry recommends the shorter version, but the Prime Minister decides.

April 2027 falls kindly: Hung Kings' Commemoration Day lands on Friday the 16th, producing a three-day weekend with no substitution required.

A word on the temptation to work the dates out yourself. Lunar holidays cannot be extrapolated from the previous year. Tet 2026 was 17 February, Tet 2027 is 6 February, Tet 2028 is 26 January — eleven days apart each time, and that regularity breaks as soon as an intercalary month appears. Check a calendar rather than your arithmetic.

Tet: the nine days when the country stops

Tet is the only Vietnamese holiday that rearranges the country rather than decorating it. In 2026 the first day of the lunar year fell on 17 February, and the official block ran from Saturday the 14th to Sunday the 22nd: nine days straight. Five were statutory; the other four were ordinary weekends at each end.

The logic runs opposite to the European one. At Christmas people travel to relax; at Tet Vietnamese people travel home. A factory worker in Bình Dương goes back to a village outside Thanh Hóa, a waitress from Da Nang to her parents in Quảng Nam. Cities empty out, buses and trains fill up a month ahead, and the countryside comes alive.

The holiday unfolds in stages, and knowing the stages is more useful than knowing one date:

• 23rd day of the last lunar month — Ông Công Ông Táo, farewell to the Kitchen Gods. Live carp are released into rivers, homes get scrubbed. Flower and fruit prices start climbing a week earlier.
• The last day of the year — everything shuts by lunchtime. Shops, markets, workshops. Families gather in the evening.
• The first three days — the most closed stretch. Small eateries, street carts, barbers and bike repair shops do not operate. The first person to enter a house sets its luck for the year, so nobody drops in uninvited.
• From day four onwards — life returns in instalments. Chains and markets first, small operators after. By the end of the block almost everything works.

Beach destinations get off lightly. Hotels and their restaurants run through the whole block, because Tet is peak season for them: on day five of Tet 2026 the Nha Trang beachfront along Phạm Văn Đồng was packed with international visitors, and Khánh Hòa logged around 320 000 overnight guests. So "everything is closed at Tet" is true for Ho Chi Minh City and false for Nha Trang and Phu Quoc.

The solar New Year on 1 January is also marked, but in a completely different register — a city event with fireworks and no family ritual attached. Where to spend 31 December and what it costs is covered in the guide to New Year in Vietnam.

What actually closes: banks, offices, museums, street food

Banks and government offices close for the entire official block, with no duty counters and no exceptions. International chains, hotels and hotel restaurants stay open throughout. Everything between those two poles depends on which holiday it is.

Cash is the main everyday snag at Tet. Banks close for nine days, and ATMs keep working but are not refilled, so by the third day of the holiday some machines in tourist districts already turn you away. Some small places take cash only during these days, and a few hotels' card terminals simply go offline.

Government offices carry a second complication. The 2025 administrative reform abolished the district tier on 1 July 2025, leaving two levels — province and commune — and from 12 June the number of provinces had already dropped from 63 to 34. Plenty of offices moved and changed jurisdiction. If your errand involves a government counter and your address comes from a two-year-old article, verify it before you go, or you will arrive at the wrong building on a closed day.

Museums and state-run sights follow their own pattern: closed for the first three days of Tet, including the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, and open with heavy queues over the May and September blocks. Private theme parks such as VinWonders do the opposite and expand their programmes.

If you need to open a Vietnamese bank account or change a large sum, allow at least three working days before the block starts.

What gets more expensive, and where the rooms run out

Domestic flights at Tet reach 7–8 m VND (~$265–305) return, seaside hotels add 10–40% over the May and September blocks, and intercity coach fares rise by up to 60%. The figures below are a guide; check the exact surcharge with the carrier.

The Thống Nhất line running north from Ho Chi Minh City is its own story. Before Tet 2026 the peak dates sold out entirely — 7 to 14 February northbound and days four to seven of the new year coming back — even though the railway had added seats. Airlines increased capacity in the same period and fares still did not soften.

The English-language rule of thumb is worth memorising: book intercity buses about a week ahead, trains several weeks ahead, and expect fares to roughly double at the peak. Hotels and Ha Long cruises sell out two to three months before Tet, which is longer than most first-time visitors assume.

Grab's surcharge runs in a declared window and is announced separately for each Tet: check the dates and hours in the app before you travel. Five thousand dong on a bike is small change, but across ten rides a week it registers. Normal-season pricing is broken down in the guide to Grab and taxis.

The May and September blocks hit accommodation rather than tickets. In 2026 seaside hotels added 10–30% for the 30 April block, up to 40% in Nha Trang, and mid- and upper-tier beachfront rooms were effectively gone in Da Nang and on Phu Quoc. Airfares on the same dates rose about 20% year on year, partly on a fuel surcharge introduced in March.

So the rule is simple arithmetic. Book flights and rooms two months out for Tet, six weeks out for 30 April and 2 September. A ticket bought a week before a holiday is not a bargain, it is whatever nobody else wanted. How to pick a route and where to save the rest of the year is in the guide on choosing a flight to Vietnam.

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The holidays nobody takes off

More than half of Vietnam's visible dates are not days off. Streets transform, temples fill, trade booms — and offices, banks and schools run as normal. For a visitor that is the best kind of holiday: atmosphere without closed doors.

Four of these lunar dates are worth keeping separately, because they move every year:

Vesak is most visible in Hue and Ho Chi Minh City: pagodas hang lotus lanterns, processions move through the streets, and restaurants add vegetarian versions of their dishes for a week. What happens inside the temples and how to behave there is covered in the guide to Vesak.

There are also fixed-programme events that have nothing to do with statutory holidays but occupy the same slot in a traveller's calendar. The Hue Festival runs across four seasons of the year; the Da Lat Flower Festival opens on 19 December 2026 and closes on the 31st. Accommodation for those dates disappears as fast as it does for the May block.

Reunification Day deserves a note of its own. Formally it is a public holiday with a day off, but for a visitor it behaves like this section: only banks and offices close, while the cities fill with parades and fireworks. The detail is in the guide to Reunification Day on 30 April.

Visas and paperwork: a holiday extends nothing

Immigration offices close for the entire holiday block — five to nine days over Tet. Submissions, collections and any changes to pending applications stop. Your visa, meanwhile, keeps running down: the calendar takes no break, the counter does.

Here is the arithmetic that catches people. Your visa expires on 16 February and immigration closed on the 14th. Filing on the last working day does not help, because processing takes several working days and holidays are not working days. From 17 February you are overstaying, and it accrues until the first working day after the block.

Fines are tiered: the minimum penalty is 500 000 VND (~$19), and from a year of overstay it is 30–40 m VND (~$1,150–1,540). Beyond the money there is the blacklist, which can cost you entry for years. The tiers and the correct order of actions are set out in the guide to visa extension.

What to do before a block rather than after:

1. Extend your visa or apply for a new one — a week ahead in normal times, two to three weeks ahead before Tet.
2. Close out work permits and anything needing an official signature.
3. Open or amend a bank account.
4. Sign or renew a lease; your landlord is going home to family too.
5. Change money and draw cash.

Embassies and consulates run their own holiday schedules and generally close for the full block, so a lost passport during Tet has no fast route. The buffer rule is simple: anything that depends on someone else's signature happens before, not on the last working day. Visa categories and the full application process are in the Vietnam visa guide.

Is it worth travelling during a holiday, and where not to 

Yes, but Tet and the May block are opposite scenarios. At Tet the country closes and the resorts keep working. On 30 April and 2 September everything works, and the resorts are overrun by Vietnamese travellers who spend those days at the sea.

Tet is easiest in Phu Quoc, Mui Ne and Nha Trang. Resort infrastructure there is built for foreigners and does not take a break: hotels, their restaurants, tour desks and rental shops run the whole block. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in the same days look abandoned — half the venues shut, though the traffic is the best it will be all year.

Where not to go over the May and September blocks: Nha Trang, Da Nang, Vung Tau, Phu Quoc. The numbers above make the case — 1.25 million people in a single province across five days. Beaches, cable cars and seafront restaurants fill up, and the intercity roads queue.

Weather is a separate axis. A holiday date and a good season are different things: February Tet lands in the dry season in the south and in cold drizzle in the north, while the September block on the central coast coincides with the start of typhoon season. Month-by-month conditions are broken down in the guide on when to visit Vietnam, and the geography of the resorts is on the map of Vietnam.

There is an upside too. Holiday blocks put things on the street you will not otherwise see: pre-Tet flower markets, fireworks over the Saigon River on 30 April, lanterns in September. If your trip does not hinge on errands, a holiday adds to it. Working hours and the general rhythm of the Vietnamese day are covered in the guide to the time zone and daily schedule.

Five mistakes people make with holiday dates

1. Using last year's Tet date. Tet 2026 and Tet 2027 are eleven days apart; 2027 and 2028 another eleven. There is no formula you can run in your head. Read the table.
2. Leaving the visa extension until after the holiday. Immigration is closed the whole block, processing counts working days, and your visa expires in calendar ones. A single missed day is already an overstay, with a fine starting at 500 000 VND (~$19).
3. Arriving with a pending e-visa. Processing stops during the block, and without an approved visa you will not be allowed to board. Apply well before the block starts.
4. Booking 30 April or 2 September a week out. Seaside rooms are gone by then and airfares are up 20%. The working window is six to eight weeks.
5. Confusing a public holiday with a festival. A statutory day off means closed institutions, not street celebrations. And the reverse: the most spectacular events of the year — the Mid-Autumn Festival, Vesak, the Da Lat Flower Festival — are not days off at all.

FAQ

Data current as of September 2026. The 2026 schedule is published by the Ministry of Home Affairs; the November block and the whole 2027 calendar are still waiting on the Prime Minister's signature — check official sources before you buy tickets.

Read also: Tet · Mid-Autumn Festival · Reunification Day · Time in Vietnam