Vietnamese Public Holidays, Tết and National Days

Viet Nam’s public-holiday calendar is compact, but its longest breaks are assembled in ways that can confuse both visitors and international teams. The Labour Code provides eleven paid statutory days. The Government then sets the exact Tết and National Day pattern each year, while weekends, compensatory leave and occasional public-service workday swaps can make the visible break longer.

That distinction matters. Five paid Tết days may sit inside nine consecutive calendar days for a Monday-to-Friday public employee; it does not turn all nine into separate public holidays. Start with the Viet Nam holiday calendar, then confirm the current Government notice, your employer’s schedule and the opening hours of the service you need.

What the Labour Code actually provides

Article 112 of the 2019 Labour Code gives employees fully paid leave for Gregorian New Year’s Day on January 1; five days for Tết Nguyên Đán; one day for the Hùng Kings Commemoration; April 30; International Labour Day on May 1; and two days for National Day. Together, these amount to eleven statutory days, although the Gregorian dates of Tết and the Hùng commemoration move with the Vietnamese lunar calendar.

National Day is a two-day entitlement: September 2 plus either the immediately preceding or following day. The Prime Minister determines the specific Tết and National Day dates annually, so a timetable copied from a previous year is not a reliable workplace calendar. Official announcements normally distinguish the public-service arrangement from options available to enterprises.

Employees who work on a public holiday fall under the Code’s enhanced-pay rules. The precise calculation can depend on whether work is daytime or night-time and on the employee’s normal pay basis, so this guide is not a substitute for payroll or legal advice. A hotel, hospital, factory or transport operator may remain open without making the day an ordinary working day for pay purposes.

Foreign employees working in Viet Nam receive the Vietnamese statutory holidays and, in addition, one traditional holiday and one National Day from their home country. International employers should record how those two extra days are selected rather than assume that an expatriate calendar replaces Tết or September 2.

Annual schedules, compensatory days and work swaps

The annual announcement turns the Code’s entitlements into usable dates. For 2026, the public-service Tết schedule placed the five statutory days from Monday, February 16 through Friday, February 20. With the weekends on either side, civil servants and public employees received nine consecutive calendar days from February 14 to 22. Private employers could choose a lawful five-day pattern—one to three days before the lunar new year and two to four after it—and had to notify employees at least thirty days beforehand.

The compensatory rule is narrower than a general promise to “move” every weekend holiday. Article 111 says that when a statutory holiday coincides with an employee’s weekly rest day, the employee receives compensatory time off on the next working day. In 2026 the Hùng Kings date fell on Sunday, April 26, so workers whose weekly rest day was Sunday received Monday, April 27 off. A worker whose regular rest pattern differs should check the applicable roster.

Authorities can also swap a working weekday with a Saturday for parts of the public sector. For National Day 2026, public employees had the statutory pair on September 1–2 and Monday, August 31 off, producing a five-day interval from August 29; Saturday, August 22 was worked in exchange. That Monday was not a newly created annual holiday, and an enterprise did not automatically inherit the swap.

Long blocks can resemble the congestion around Japan’s Golden Week, but the legal machinery is different. Viet Nam combines a small statutory list with lunar conversion, adjoining weekends, compensation and sometimes sector-specific exchanges. Always read the dates and the audience named in the annual notice.

Tết Nguyên Đán: homecoming, renewal and variation

Tết Nguyên Đán—usually shortened to Tết—begins the Vietnamese lunar new year, normally in late January or February. It long predates the modern Labour Code. Its layers include agricultural ideas of seasonal renewal, ancestor remembrance, household obligations and the contemporary movement of people from cities and industrial centres back to family homes. Calling it only “Vietnamese Chinese New Year” erases its Vietnamese history and vocabulary, even though East Asian lunar calendars and customs have influenced one another over centuries.

Preparation often begins well before the first statutory day. Families may clean and repair the home, settle unfinished business, shop at flower markets and tend an ancestral altar. Northern displays are associated with pink peach blossom, while yellow hoa mai is especially prominent in the south; kumquat trees are widely sold. These are regional tendencies, not a rigid north-south dress code for every household.

Food makes the regional and family detail visible. Square bánh chưng, wrapped and slowly boiled sticky-rice cakes, is strongly associated with the north. Cylindrical bánh tét is common in central and southern celebrations. Southern tables may include braised pork and eggs or bitter-melon soup, while recipes, vegetarian practice, budgets and family histories produce many other menus. Sharing food and remembering absent relatives can matter more than reproducing a supposedly definitive feast.

In the first days, people exchange wishes such as Chúc Mừng Năm Mới, give lì xì money in red envelopes, visit relatives or places of worship and pay respect to ancestors. Some households carefully choose the first visitor, a custom called xông đất, because that arrival is thought to shape the year’s fortune. Visitors should not arrive uninvited on the first morning or treat altar offerings as props. Not every Vietnamese person follows these customs, and ethnic-minority, religious, urban, rural and overseas communities maintain distinct calendars and practices.

Hùng Kings Commemoration: heritage and origin stories

Hùng Kings Commemoration Day falls on the tenth day of the third lunar month. The title refers to rulers associated in tradition with Văn Lang and the founding ancestry of the Vietnamese nation. Stories of Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ and their hundred children belong to a powerful origin tradition; they should not be presented as a fully documented dynastic chronology.

The principal pilgrimage is centred on the Hùng temples at Nghĩa Lĩnh Mountain in Phú Thọ. UNESCO inscribed the worship of the Hùng Kings on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2012, describing a living practice maintained at temples and domestic altars. The anniversary has been a national paid holiday since 2007, but worship and festival activity extend beyond the legal day off.

Representatives of communities bring incense, flowers and rice-cake offerings; processions, drums and gongs accompany ceremonies at the temple complex. Xoan singing, closely connected with Phú Thọ’s ritual landscape, may appear in festival programmes. Elsewhere, families and local temples mark the ancestors in less elaborate ways. The commemoration expresses a shared national genealogy while Viet Nam itself remains culturally and ethnically diverse.

April 30 and May 1: history beside a travel weekend

Reunification Day on April 30 records the fall of Saigon in 1975, when northern and revolutionary forces entered the city and the Republic of Viet Nam government collapsed. The event ended the long war; formal constitutional reunification followed in 1976. The state’s fuller English name is often “Day of the Liberation of the South and National Reunification,” while “Reunification Day” is common calendar shorthand.

Official ceremonies emphasize victory, independence and national unity, with flags, exhibitions, performances and, in some years, large parades or fireworks. Personal memory is not uniform. Depending on a family’s wartime experience in Viet Nam or the diaspora, April 30 can also recall relief, bereavement, displacement, political rupture or exile. A historically responsible visitor can recognize the public commemoration without claiming that one official or diasporic account exhausts the date’s meaning.

The next day is the paid May 1 holiday, rooted in the international workers’ movement and now part of Viet Nam’s labour calendar. Official programmes can discuss worker welfare, trade unions, safety or productivity, while many people simply use the adjacent days for family visits and travel. In 2026, Thursday April 30 and Friday May 1 led directly into a standard weekend, creating a four-day break for workers with Saturday and Sunday off—not four separate statutory holidays.

National Day: September 2 and its second day

National Day commemorates September 2, 1945, when Hồ Chí Minh read the Declaration of Independence at Ba Đình Square in Hà Nội and proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam. The declaration followed Japanese surrender and the August Revolution, but independence did not bring an immediate settled peace: French colonial rule had not been peacefully unwound, and decades of warfare and political division followed.

The current Socialist Republic treats September 2 as its principal national anniversary. Ba Đình remains an important ceremonial focus, while national and local programmes can include flag-raising, museum exhibitions, concerts, fireworks and public tributes. Streets and buildings display the red national flag. Scale varies from an ordinary anniversary to a major jubilee, and a busy domestic holiday trip may be a person’s main experience of the break.

Since the 2019 Labour Code took effect in 2021, the entitlement has been two paid days: September 2 and one adjacent day chosen in the annual arrangement. Private employers therefore need the current notice to know whether their second statutory day is September 1 or 3. Public-service weekends or exchanged workdays may lengthen the visible closure further, but they do not alter that two-day legal core.

Regional culture and important days that remain working days

A statutory list cannot describe all Vietnamese festive life. Tết Trung Thu, the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, is widely marked with lanterns, mooncakes, lion dances and children’s programmes, but it is not a national paid holiday. Vietnamese Family Day on June 28 is another recognized observance rather than a nationwide day off. A school, municipality or business event does not change that legal status.

Regional texture matters within the large holidays too. Tết weather, flowers and food differ between the northern winter, central regions and the tropical south. Khmer communities in the Mekong Delta, Cham communities, highland peoples, Catholics, Buddhists and households with secular practice do not share one uniform ritual calendar. Local temple festivals and village commemorations can affect traffic and opening hours without appearing on a national office list.

This is similar to the planning distinction in our guide to Thai holidays and festivals: cultural importance, religious observance and a legal day off answer different questions. The calendars themselves are not interchangeable. In Viet Nam, check the Labour Code and annual central notice for national leave, then consult local organizers for a procession, performance or neighbourhood closure.

Travel, international work and respectful participation

Tết needs the earliest planning. Flights, trains and intercity buses become heavily booked before the official break as workers return home; demand reverses when cities and industrial areas reopen. Small restaurants and family businesses may close for several days, while hotels, convenience stores and major attractions operate reduced or special schedules. Book transport early, keep one flexible day and confirm meals and medicine rather than assuming a large city remains fully serviced.

April 30–May 1 and National Day produce strong domestic leisure demand, especially when they meet a weekend. Beaches, mountain destinations and major-city attractions can fill; roads may be restricted around parades, fireworks or ceremonial sites. Banks, consulates, government counters and delivery networks may pause even where tourism businesses stay open. Online access does not guarantee that a transaction will settle during the closure.

For international teams, publish a calendar that separates statutory leave, weekly rest, compensatory leave and swapped workdays. Confirm the enterprise’s Tết pattern and adjacent National Day date after the annual notice, and record the two additional home-country days available to foreign employees. Do not schedule a critical launch on the assumption that every colleague returns the morning the public-service calendar ends.

Respectful participation is uncomplicated. Accept an invitation before visiting a home at Tết, remove shoes where asked, let hosts guide conduct around an ancestral altar and ask before photographing worshippers. A modest lì xì gift may be welcome when the relationship makes it appropriate, but nobody owes a visitor a staged custom. At war museums or April 30 memorial events, read institutional framing critically while giving veterans, bereaved families and other visitors room for their own memories.

Official sources and further reading

• Ministry of Justice legal database: Labour Code No. 45/2019/QH14
• ILO NATLEX: Labour Code record and English text
• Viet Nam Government News: Ministry of Home Affairs 2026 holiday schedule
• Viet Nam Government News: Hùng Kings, April 30 and May 1 arrangements in 2026
• UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage: worship of the Hùng Kings in Phú Thọ
• Viet Nam Government News: April 30 historical record
• Viet Nam Government News: September 2 and the Declaration of Independence
• Viet Nam National Authority of Tourism: traveller’s guide to Tết