Hùng Kings Day

Hùng Kings Commemoration Day, also known as Giỗ Tổ Hùng Vương, honours the legendary founders associated with the earliest Vietnamese state traditions. The Hùng Temple festival in Phú Thọ is its best-known focal point, but the commemoration reaches far beyond one province through family remembrance, cultural programmes and a shared language of national origins.

The day became a statutory public holiday in the modern labour calendar, giving it both civic and cultural importance. In 2026, the tenth day of the third lunar month falls on Sunday April 26; the Government announced the corresponding three-day break for the relevant schedule from April 25 to 27. The lunar date moves each year, so future dates must be checked against the official calendar.

UNESCO inscribed the worship of the Hùng Kings in Phú Thọ on its Representative List in 2012, describing living rites rather than treating the kings as a fully documented modern dynasty. Communities converge on Nghĩa Lĩnh Mountain with incense, rice-cake offerings, drums, gongs, Xoan singing and prayers for health and harvests. In 2026 the statutory lunar date fell on Sunday, April 26. Employees whose weekly rest day coincided with it received compensatory leave on Monday, April 27 under the Labour Code; the surrounding weekend produced a three-day break for standard schedules, not three separate public holidays.