The Hue Festival 2026 opens with the re-enactment of the Ban Soc Ceremony under the Nguyen Dynasty (Photo: baovanhoa.vn)
According to Hoang Viet Trung, Director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre and Deputy Head of the Hue Festival 2026 Organising Committee, the festival will feature a year-long series of activities, with nearly 80 cultural, tourism and sports events scheduled to take place in Hue, alongside international exchange programmes.
In addition to the major events, various festivals, exhibitions and displays organised by domestic and international institutions and individuals will also be held.
Hue Festival 2026 will continue to follow the four-season festival format. Spring events will focus on Tet of Hue programmes, traditional Tet cultural spaces and spring festivities of the former imperial capital, combined with contemporary art.
Summer activities will highlight Festival Week 2026 under the theme “Cultural Heritage with Integration and Development,” which is expected to bring together Hue’s heritage, cultural expressions from across Vietnam, and contributions from countries and territories worldwide.
Autumn will feature Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, lantern festivals, lion dance performances and artistic programmes, while Winter events are set to include several new festivals, concluding with a New Year countdown art programme.
Hue Festival 2026 is being organised as the city step up efforts to develop into a centrally governed municipality, based on the preservation and promotion of the former imperial capital’s heritage values and Hue’s cultural identity. The festival also serves as an opportunity to promote Hue’s cultural heritage, with the Complex of Hue Monuments at its core.
Opening the festival was the staged reenactment of the Ban Soc ceremony under the Nguyen Dynasty, a programme researched and organised since 2021 and maintained to date as a distinctive cultural offering for visitors at the beginning of the year.
Following the ceremony, representatives of the Hue Festival Organising Committee presented 2026 calendars to domestic and international visitors and conveyed New Year wishes of peace. On this occasion, the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre also organised various cultural activities at heritage sites across the city.
