Tet 2027 in Hoi An and Da Nang: What Closes on 6 February, and What the Roads Do Instead

The February questions arrive in October, and they are all one question: will the town be shut. Almost nothing closes for long — but the few things that do are the ones visitors touch most: the ticket desk, the walking street, a favourite kitchen. Everything underneath carries on, louder than usual. Here is the shape of it, dated to 2027 and built on what the city actually did last February.

When is Tết 2027, and which days matter?

Mùng 1 of Tết Đinh Mùi, the Year of the Goat, falls on Saturday 6 February 2027. That puts giao thừa — the crossing — on the night of Friday 5 February, mùng 2 on Sunday 7 February, mùng 3 on Monday 8 February. Two later dates matter as much: Khai hạ, mùng 7, on Friday 12 February, after which normal life resumes; and 14, 15 and 16 tháng Giêng, which fall on Friday 19 to Sunday 21 February 2027 and carry Tết Nguyên tiêu.

The public holiday is a separate thing from the lunar dates. The Labour Code guarantees one day for 1 January and at least five for the lunar new year, with the Prime Minister setting the exact run each year. Reporting through mid-2026 had the 2027 schedule still unpublished, with a seven-day 4–10 February window widely discussed because mùng 1 and mùng 2 land on a weekend. Until the Government Office issues it, late in 2026, that is a forecast.

What actually closes in Hội An, and for how long?

The ticket system, briefly. For Tết Bính Ngọ 2026 the city suspended Old Town ticket sales and guided visits from 16 to 19 February — 29 tháng Chạp through the end of mùng 3 — and said plainly that the private and communal monuments on the ticket route would stay open anyway, for their own new-year rites. So the gate goes away and the houses do not. Map that shape onto 2027 and you get roughly 5 to 8 February, pending the notice.

The second suspension is the one nobody expects. The pedestrian and non-motorised-vehicle zone, and the night street, paused from 14 to 19 February 2026 — six days. For that stretch, traffic runs in lanes that are car-free for the other 359 days of the year. It is the one week we can get a vehicle unusually close to a doorway in the old quarter, and the one week we drive those lanes at walking pace, because the crowd in them has no habit of listening for an engine.

What is on across the Tết weeks?

More than the holiday itself. The 2026 programme, Hội Tết Nguyên Đán Bính Ngọ, ran from the middle of tháng Chạp through the end of tháng Giêng, with the concentrated block listed as 9 to 26 February across phường Hội An, Hội An Đông and Hội An Tây — the three wards Hội An became when it was folded into Đà Nẵng city on 1 July 2025. Inside it: the Hội hoa Xuân flower fair, listed 9–16 February at phường Hội An; the raising of the cây nêu, the new-year bamboo pole, as a public rite; a bánh Tết day; and the Tết xưa phố Hội market, the one worth timing a drive around.

Đà Nẵng runs the same idea at city scale: more than thirty cultural and tourism events from late January to the end of March 2026, among them the Lễ hội Tết dân gian An Hải, the spring flower fair, and the chợ hoa - đường hoa xuân around the Bạch Đằng riverfront walking street. The Chợ Hoa Xuân at the Tiên Sơn sports arena in phường Hòa Cường traded through to giao thừa evening. A flower-market run is a good late-afternoon drive on 3 or 4 February: stock at its peak, decent light, and the car waits while you walk the rows.

Where do the fireworks go, and what happens on the road afterwards?

In 2026 the city plan — issued on 3 February for a 17 February midnight, which tells you how late this gets confirmed — set fifteen minutes of fireworks from 00:00 on mùng 1 at six points: Bạch Đằng at the Bình Minh 6 junction in phường Hòa Cường, the forecourt of UBND phường Hòa Khánh, the western-ring resettlement area in Hòa Vang, the Cồn Bắp tourist area in Hội An, Quảng trường 24/3 at Bàn Thạch, and Quảng trường Núi Thành.

Read that as a driving problem. Fifteen minutes of fireworks empties a riverfront in about ten and fills the approach roads for forty. If you watch in Đà Nẵng and sleep in Hội An, the 30 km run that costs 45 minutes on an ordinary night is not a 45-minute run at 00:20 on mùng 1. We either leave before the last shell or sit the first half-hour out over coffee, and the second is almost always faster. The Cồn Bắp option keeps the night inside Hội An, which on that one night beats a better view.

How bad is the airport, and when should you leave for it?

Busy in a way that shows up in the numbers. Across the nine days from 14 to 22 February 2026, Đà Nẵng and Chu Lai forecast more than 1,500 aircraft movements, up about 37 percent on Tết 2025 — roughly 847 domestic flights carrying over 130,000 passengers, and 732 international flights carrying about 128,000. From 10 to 24 February the daily average was 343 movements against 246 in the same window of 2025, with peak-hour volumes described as near the design capacity of terminals T1 and T2. Afterwards the city counted 1.1 million visitors over those nine days, 27 percent up year on year.

What that means in a car: the airport road and the terminal kerb both behave like a holiday, not a Tuesday. On ordinary days we plan Hội An to the airport at 30 km and 40 to 50 minutes. Through a Tết peak, add a buffer of half an hour to that and another half-hour inside the terminal, and treat a tight connection on mùng 2 or mùng 3 — when the domestic return wave peaks — as the thing to redesign rather than to hope about.

Is Tết Nguyên tiêu the better week?

For a lot of travellers, yes. Tết Nguyên tiêu in Hội An has been a national intangible cultural heritage since 2023, and the hội is built on community and devotional practice rather than on a parade for visitors: preparation begins after Khai hạ, the main rites fall on the 15th and 16th of tháng Giêng, and the calendar fills with cầu an ceremonies at the assembly halls, lion and dragon dancing, palanquin processions and hoa đăng floated on the Hoài. The 2026 hội ran 2–4 March; in 2027 those dates are Friday 19 to Sunday 21 February. Shops are open, kitchens are back, the first-week traffic has drained, and the art lanterns installed for the December 2026 international lantern festival are planned to stay up through to Nguyên tiêu — so the Old Town is still dressed.

When to commit, and the short version

Tết is the week when the whole country moves at once, and the moving parts — flights, rooms, a driver on the specific morning you need one — run out first. Book the fixed points in October and November; leave the flexible ones for January.

So: mùng 1 is Saturday 6 February 2027. Expect the Old Town ticket desk and guided visits to pause from about 5 to 8 February, and the walking street for a couple of days either side, while the heritage houses, temples and assembly halls stay open and are at their best. Flower markets and the Tết xưa programme run for weeks on both sides. Midnight on mùng 1 means fireworks, then a riverfront emptying onto the roads. The airport runs near capacity for about ten days. The quietest, most complete version of the whole thing is the Nguyên tiêu weekend, 19 to 21 February.

If you want these days driven — a flower-market afternoon, a fireworks night that ends in your own bed, an airport run with the Tết buffer already built in — tell us the dates at hoiandriver.com/quote. A real driver prices the trip, 10% books it, and the balance is settled at trip end in the dollars you were quoted.