Hoi An Lantern Festival: Dates, History, and How to Experience It

The Hoi An Lantern Festival is not the nightly string of paper lanterns lining the Ancient Town’s streets — it is a monthly, town-wide event on the 14th night of every lunar month, when Hoi An switches off its electric lights, closes the Ancient Town to vehicle traffic, and lets thousands of lanterns carry the whole town for a few hours. It happens whether or not you plan for it, so knowing the actual dates matters more than knowing the festival exists.

What Is the Hoi An Lantern Festival, Exactly?

Once a month, on the 14th day of the lunar calendar — the night before the full moon — Hoi An’s Ancient Town turns off its electric lighting and lets candlelit lanterns take over. Local authorities formalized this into an organized monthly event sometime in the late 1990s , building on a much older local custom: 16th- and 17th-century Chinese and Japanese merchants who settled in Hoi An hung lanterns outside their doors as a reminder of home, and the practice was gradually adopted into Vietnamese family tradition as a symbol of good fortune.

During the festival, all vehicle traffic stops in the Ancient Town, restaurants and shopfronts dim or kill their electric lights, and the Hoai River fills with small wooden boats selling candlelit paper lanterns to float downstream while making a wish. Street performers play traditional instruments, locals set up folk games like Bai Choi (a musical bingo game) along the sidewalks, and vendors sell street food late into the evening.

When Is the Next Hoi An Lantern Festival?

Because the festival is tied to the lunar calendar rather than a fixed Gregorian date, it falls on a different day each Western-calendar month. Here are the 2026 dates, each the 14th night of a lunar month:

These dates against a current lunar calendar close to your travel date — they are computed from the lunar calendar and should be double-checked, since local sources occasionally publish slightly different figures. Dates shift every year, so if you are reading this in 2027 or later, search "Hoi An Lantern Festival" plus your travel month to confirm before building an itinerary around it.

Hoi An Full Moon Lantern Festival: Christophe95 / CC BY-SA 4.0

How to Experience the Festival Like a Local

Arrive by around 6pm, before the Ancient Town closes to vehicle traffic and the crowds thicken. The Japanese Covered Bridge and the An Hoi Bridge are the two best vantage points for watching the river fill with lantern light from above, and both get crowded fast once the sun sets. If you want to release a floating lantern yourself, buy one from any of the small shore stalls along the riverbank rather than from a boat.

Beyond the river, wander the side streets: locals set up folk games like Bai Choi on sidewalks, street vendors sell late-night snacks, and small groups play traditional music on bamboo flutes and drums near the market. None of it is staged specifically for tourists — it is simply the town’s own monthly custom, which is a large part of why it feels different from a nightly light display.

Is It Worth Planning Your Trip Around?

If you can align your Hoi An dates with the 14th lunar day without reshuffling the rest of your Vietnam itinerary, it is worth doing — this is a genuinely different, more atmospheric night than a normal evening in the Ancient Town. But it is not worth compressing or complicating a wider Vietnam trip just to catch one specific night. Hoi An is lit with lanterns every evening of the year, and the general after-dark experience — night market, lantern boats, riverside bars — is covered in full in our Hoi An After Dark guide, which is the better starting point if your dates do not line up.