Tet 2027 Vietnam: Feb 6 Dates & What's Actually Open

Tet 2027 falls on Saturday, February 6, 2027. That is mùng 1, the first day of the lunar year, and it starts the Year of the Goat (Đinh Mùi). New Year's Eve, the part that actually matters to most Vietnamese families, is the night of Friday, February 5.

If that is all you came for, you can stop reading. But the date is the easy part since the hard part is that for roughly a week either side of it, the country you were planning to travel through quietly changes shape where shops shut, fares triple. Whole streets that were selling bún chả at 7am go dark for three days. And the standard advice you will find online, avoid Vietnam during Tet, is only about half right.

Tet 2027 key dates at a glance

One thing worth flagging straight away, because almost nobody else has updated for it: as of writing, the 2027 public holiday schedule has not been finalised. The Ministry of Home Affairs put forward two options, and the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour has backed the shorter one. More on that below, because it changes when you should book.

When exactly is Tet 2027, and why the dates move every year

Tet follows the lunar calendar, so it drifts. Tet 2026 was February 17. Tet 2027 is February 6, a full eleven days earlier. Tet 2028 jumps back again to January 26.

This matters more than it sounds. February 6 is a Saturday, which means the holiday bleeds into the weekend on both ends and the government has to decide how many weekdays to bolt on. It also means the busiest travel days, when tens of millions of people head to their hometowns, land in the first week of February rather than mid-month.

The full name is Tết Nguyên Đán. You will also see Tết Âm Lịch (lunar new year), or just Tết. For 2027 you might see it written as Tết Đinh Mùi 2027, which is the sexagenary cycle name, the same way 2026 was Bính Ngọ.

And no, Tet is not simply Chinese New Year with a different name. Same lunar calendar, same date most years, completely different food, different flowers, different rituals, and occasionally a different date altogether because Vietnam uses UTC+7 for its calculations while China uses UTC+8. The two calendars have diverged before and will again.

How long is the Tet 2027 holiday?

The official break has not been confirmed yet (as of September 2026). Here is where it stands.

The Ministry of Home Affairs proposed two options. Option one gives civil servants seven consecutive days off, Thursday February 4 through Wednesday February 10. Option two stretches it to ten days, Friday February 5 through Sunday February 14. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labour has already come out in favour of the seven-day version, and that is the one most people expect the Prime Minister to sign.

For context, Tet 2026 ran nine days, February 14 to 22, the longest official Tet break in Vietnamese history. So seven days would actually be a step back down.

Why should you care about a civil service memo? Because private companies, factories, tour operators and half the country's small businesses take their cue from it. When the official window is announced, usually in the autumn, the airlines reprice and the good train berths vanish within days. If you are planning around Tet 2027, watch for that announcement and book the same week.

Also worth knowing: the official holiday and the real holiday are not the same thing. Plenty of family-run places shut a few days before the official start and reopen a few days after. Rural areas run longest. In practice, budget for closures from roughly February 4 to February 11, and expect a slow, patchy return to normal after that.

What actually closes during Tet (and what stays open)

This is the section people really need, so let me be specific rather than vague.

On mùng 1, 2 and 3 (February 6, 7 and 8), expect the large majority of small restaurants, street food carts, local cafés, tailors, laundries, family-run shops, spas and independent tour desks to be closed. Not reduced hours. Closed, shutters down, family gone to the countryside. In smaller towns it can feel genuinely eerie.

Museums, mausoleums and government-run sites usually close for the first three days too. Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum in Hanoi shuts. Banks close. Post offices close. Visa and immigration offices close, which is the one that catches people out, so sort any paperwork before the first week of February.

Now the other half, which the doom-and-gloom guides skip. Hotels stay open and run normally, and hotel restaurants become the most reliable food in town. International chains keep going in the big cities. Convenience stores like Circle K, GS25 and VinMart+ mostly stay open on shorter hours. Korean, Japanese and Indian restaurants in expat neighbourhoods often trade right through, because the owners are not celebrating. Pagodas and temples are not just open, they are the busiest they will be all year, which is half the reason to be there.

Tourist districts hold up much better than residential ones. Hanoi's Old Quarter, District 1 in Ho Chi Minh City, Hoi An's Ancient Town, the beach strips in Da Nang and Nha Trang: these keep a decent share of businesses trading because their customers are not going anywhere. Head fifteen minutes out into a residential ward on mùng 1 and you will find nothing.

Cave and national park operations in central Vietnam generally keep running as well, with skeleton teams over the peak days. February sits in the dry season for Quang Binh, which is the practical reason many travellers end up in Phong Nha around Tet rather than in a shuttered city.

Transport during Tet 2027: book in November, not January

I want to put some real numbers on this, because book early means nothing on its own.

For Tet 2026, domestic flights, trains and sleeper buses were selling out four to six weeks ahead, at two to three times normal fares. Vietnam Airlines Group released 3.5 million tickets for the Tet peak, nearly twenty percent more capacity than the previous year, and the busiest four-day block still sold out. Regional international routes went the same way, with Vietnam to Bangkok fares roughly doubling from about 4 to 5 million VND up to 8 to 10 million.

Expect the same pattern for 2027, shifted eleven days earlier. The crush will fall around February 3 to 5 outbound from the big cities, and February 9 to 12 coming back.

Trains are the first thing to disappear. Soft sleeper berths on the north-south line get booked out by hometown travellers who plan a year ahead, and they are not flexible about it. Sleeper buses last a bit longer but get uncomfortable, and drivers push hard to finish their runs before Giao Thừa. If you need to move on February 5 specifically, assume you will pay a premium and sit in traffic.

A few practical moves that genuinely help. Fly rather than take the road on the peak days, if you can get a seat. Book hotels direct rather than through a platform, so you have a phone number that answers when something changes. Pull cash out before February 3, because bank branches close and ATMs in smaller towns do run dry over the holiday. And pad your itinerary: one delayed connection during Tet week has a way of eating two days.

Most importantly, do not plan to move on mùng 1. Be somewhere by the evening of February 5 and stay put for two or three nights. Travellers who do this have a good Tet. Travellers who try to cover four cities in the same week do not.

What Tet actually feels like, day by day

The week before is my favourite part, honestly, and it is the bit that gets ignored because it is not technically the holiday.

From around January 30, Kitchen Gods day, the country visibly shifts. Families release live carp into lakes and rivers so the household gods can ride them up to report on the year. Flower markets take over entire streets. In the north it is peach blossom and kumquat trees, and you will see men riding motorbikes with a whole tree strapped across the back, somehow. In the south it is yellow apricot blossom, hoa mai. Quang Ba flower market in Hanoi and Ho Thi Ky in Saigon run through the night in that final week, and if you only do one Tet thing, do this one.

Then Giao Thừa, February 5. Families clean the house, settle debts, cook, and set out the mâm ngũ quả, a five-fruit tray on the ancestral altar. Cities put on fireworks at midnight. Hanoi's go up over Hoan Kiem Lake, Ho Chi Minh City's over the Saigon River near Bach Dang wharf, and both get extremely crowded, so get there early or watch from a rooftop bar.

Mùng 1 is quiet. Almost unsettlingly so, if you have only known Vietnamese cities as loud. Traffic thins to nothing. Families stay home, visit the paternal side, and observe xông đất, the belief that the first person to enter the house sets the tone for the year. Do not go knocking on anyone's door uninvited on the morning of mùng 1.

Mùng 2 is for the maternal side, mùng 3 for teachers, which is what the saying "mùng 1 Tết cha, mùng 2 Tết mẹ, mùng 3 Tết thầy" refers to. From mùng 3 onward the shutters start coming up. By around February 11 or 12, most cities are back to normal, though rural areas take longer and some restaurant owners just do not come back until after the full moon.

The season formally closes on February 20 with Tết Nguyên Tiêu, the first full moon. Pagodas fill up again. It is a good, calm bookend if you are still in the country.

Where to actually be during Tet 2027

Not all of Vietnam handles Tet the same way, so here is the honest split.

Central Vietnam and Phong Nha. February is the driest, mildest stretch of the year in Quang Binh, roughly 17 to 23°C, which is why the caving season is in full swing. The Son Doong expedition season opens in late January. Adventure operators run through the holiday with reduced teams, the national park is uncrowded compared to the domestic summer peak, and the villages around Phong Nha do a low-key, genuinely local Tet rather than a tourist-facing one. If you want the festival without the closure headache, this is the sweet spot. Our Phong Nha itinerary guide covers how to structure a few days, and getting to Phong Nha covers the transport, which you will want to lock in early for February.

Hanoi. Best atmosphere, hands down. The Old Quarter empties out in a way that is worth seeing once, the pagodas are packed with people praying for the year ahead, and temple visits around the lunar new year are the real event. Cold and drizzly though, often 13 to 18°C with that damp northern grey that gets into everything. Pack more layers than you think.

Ho Chi Minh City. Nguyen Hue becomes a flower street for about a week and it is genuinely lovely at night. The city empties harder than Hanoi does, because so much of its workforce is from elsewhere, so District 1 stays lively while everywhere else goes silent. Warm and dry, around 30°C.

Hoi An and Da Nang. Reliable. Enough tourism infrastructure that you will eat well, plus lantern-lit streets that photograph absurdly well over Tet. Cool and occasionally drizzly in February.

Sapa and the far north. Beautiful and cold, sometimes near freezing, occasionally with frost. Ethnic minority communities in the northern highlands celebrate their own new year traditions, which is fascinating, but transport up there gets thin over the holiday and roads can be foggy.

Where I would not go: anywhere small, remote and not set up for tourism, on mùng 1 through 3. You will be hungry and bored.

Etiquette, red envelopes and the things not to do

Tet has more rules than most travellers expect, and locals are forgiving about foreigners breaking them, but knowing a few earns you a lot of goodwill.

Lì xì, lucky money in red envelopes, is the main one. If you are invited to a family home, bring envelopes for the children. Crisp new notes, 20,000 to 100,000 VND each is plenty, and the number matters more than the amount. Avoid anything with a 4 in it. Hand it over with both hands, and say chúc mừng năm mới.

Do not give clocks, sharp objects, black or white items, or anything in sets of four. Do not wear all black or all white, which read as funeral colours. Red and gold are the safe, cheerful choices, and nobody will think you are trying too hard.

Once you are inside someone's house on mùng 1, do not sweep, and do not take rubbish out. Both are understood to be throwing away the year's luck. Do not lend or borrow money. Do not argue, cry, or break anything, which is easier said than done after three shots of rượu.

On the food side: try bánh chưng in the north or bánh tét in the south, sticky rice cakes wrapped in dong leaves, one square for earth and one cylindrical. They are heavier than they look. Thịt kho tàu, caramelised pork with eggs, is on every southern table. And canh khổ qua, bitter melon soup, gets eaten specifically because the name means "hardship passes." Nobody claims it tastes good. That is not the point.

If you want more grounding before you arrive, our guides to Vietnamese street food and the áo dài both come in useful during Tet week, since half the country is wearing one and eating the other.

So should you travel to Vietnam during Tet 2027?

Depends what you want, and I will not pretend otherwise.

If your trip is a tight ten days with a packed city-hopping itinerary, restaurant reservations and a lot of internal flights, then no. Move it. You will spend the week paying more for less and staring at closed doors, and you will leave thinking Vietnam was disappointing, which would be an unfair conclusion drawn from the one week of the year it is not itself.

If you have flexibility, three weeks, or a base you are happy to stay put in, then Tet is one of the best times to be here. The week before is the most alive Vietnam gets. The three quiet days are strange and memorable. And the country afterwards, through late February and March, is arguably the best travel window of the whole year: dry, mild, and emptied of the crowds.

The move that works is simple. Arrive by February 2. Spend the run-up in a flower market and a busy city. Be somewhere comfortable with a functioning kitchen for February 6 to 8, ideally a place like Phong Nha or Hoi An where the surroundings do not depend on shops being open. Then start moving again from February 10, into what is quietly the best four weeks on the Vietnamese calendar.

FAQ

1. When is Tet 2027 in Vietnam

Tet 2027 is on Saturday, February 6, 2027. That is mùng 1, the first day of the lunar year. New Year's Eve, Giao Thừa, is the night of Friday, February 5.

2. What animal year is Tet 2027

2027 is the Year of the Goat, Đinh Mùi in the Vietnamese sexagenary cycle. It follows the Year of the Horse (Bính Ngọ), which ran through 2026.

3. How many days is the Tet 2027 holiday in Vietnam

The official schedule has not been signed off yet. Two options were proposed: seven days from February 4 to 10, or ten days from February 5 to 14. The labour confederation has backed the seven-day option, so that is the likely outcome, but check for the final announcement in late 2026. For comparison, Tet 2026 ran nine days.

4. Is everything closed in Vietnam during Tet

No, though a lot is. Small local restaurants, shops, museums, banks and government offices close for roughly the first three days, February 6 to 8. Hotels, hotel restaurants, convenience stores, international chains and tourist-district businesses generally stay open. Pagodas are open and extremely busy.

5. Is Tet a good time to visit Vietnam

It can be excellent if you plan around it and terrible if you do not. The week before Tet is the most atmospheric time of year. The three days of Tet itself require patience and a good base. If your itinerary depends on daily moves and reliable restaurant openings, pick different dates.

6. Is Tet the same as Chinese New Year

They fall on the same day most years and share a lunar calendar, but they are distinct festivals with different food, flowers, rituals and history. Vietnam calculates its calendar on UTC+7 and China on UTC+8, so the dates occasionally differ by a day or even a month. Calling Tet "Chinese New Year" in Vietnam does not go down well.

7. When should I book flights and trains for Tet 2027

By November 2026 at the latest, and ideally the week the official holiday dates are announced. For Tet 2026, domestic flights, trains and buses were selling out four to six weeks ahead at two to three times normal fares. Sleeper train berths on the north-south line go first.

8. How much lucky money should I give at Tet

Between 20,000 and 100,000 VND per child is normal and appreciated. Use crisp new notes, avoid amounts containing a 4, present the envelope with both hands, and say chúc mừng năm mới. The gesture counts far more than the sum.

9. Are tours and caves in Phong Nha open during Tet

Mostly yes. February is dry season in Quang Binh, around 17 to 23°C, and the Son Doong expedition season opens in late January. Adventure operators typically run through the holiday with smaller teams, though it is worth confirming departure dates directly rather than assuming. Book earlier than usual, since the transport to get there is the constraint, not the tours themselves.