Tet Nguyen Dan 2027 falls on Saturday 6 February, opening the Year of the Goat — Mùi in the Vietnamese zodiac, Đinh Mùi in the sixty-year cycle. Tet Eve, Giao Thừa, is Friday 5 February, and the three most heavily observed days run Saturday 6 through Monday 8 February.
The honest verdict, up front: travelling in Vietnam during Tet is extraordinary if you came for culture and frustrating if you came to sightsee. The week before Tet is the most visually remarkable stretch of the Vietnamese year. The three days after it are the quietest major cities you will ever walk through in Asia, with most independent businesses shut and families indoors. If your itinerary is a list of museums, cooking classes and day trips, move your dates. If you want to watch a country of a hundred million people go home all at once, this is the only window there is.
This guide is the traveller-facing half of the picture — what Tet is, what it feels like, and how to behave. For the measured numbers on how far prices move and how many businesses actually close, see the companion data piece on the Tet effect in 2027.
What Tet actually is
Tet is a family homecoming, not a street party laid on for visitors — and almost every practical consequence flows from that one fact.
It is the largest holiday in the Vietnamese calendar by a wide margin, occupying roughly the cultural space that Christmas, Thanksgiving and a national birthday would occupy combined. The centre of it is the family altar and the ancestors. Households clean the house thoroughly before the new year, settle outstanding debts, and prepare offerings so that the year opens without anything unfinished carried into it. On the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month — late January in 2027 — families send off Ông Táo, the kitchen god, who reports on the household before the year turns. Sticky-rice cakes are steamed for hours: bánh chưng, the square northern version, and bánh tét, the cylindrical one favoured in the centre and south.
Understanding this explains the closures better than any list can. Businesses do not shut because of a regulation. They shut because the person who runs the bún chả counter is on a bus to Nam Định, and she is going whether or not you wanted lunch.
The build-up is the best week of the Vietnamese year
If you only get one Tet week, take the one before it rather than the holiday itself.
From roughly the last days of January through Tet Eve on 5 February 2027, Vietnamese cities fill up with flowers. Hanoi's Quảng Bá flower market runs through the night. Kumquat trees heavy with orange fruit, and branches of peach blossom in the north or yellow apricot — hoa mai — in the south, get strapped to the backs of motorbikes and driven home through traffic, which is the single most photographed image of the Vietnamese year for good reason. Hàng Mã street in Hanoi turns red and gold with decorations. In Ho Chi Minh City, the Nguyễn Huệ flower street installation goes up in the days before Tet and draws enormous evening crowds.
Everything is open, everything is busy, and the whole country is visibly building towards something. This is also, bluntly, the last moment to buy anything you will need, because the shops are about to close.
The days themselves: quiet streets and closed shutters
Expect three days in which the cities empty out and turn inward, then a staggered, uneven reopening.
Mùng 1 (Saturday 6 February 2027) belongs to the immediate family and is the quietest day of all. The xông đất custom governs who crosses the threshold first — families choose that person deliberately, because the first visitor is held to set the household's fortune for the year, so nobody drops in casually. Mùng 2 traditionally goes to extended family and friends, and mùng 3 to teachers. Pagodas are the exception to the general quiet: they are packed, and worth visiting.
What stays open is predictable. Hotels, airports, hospitals, convenience stores and international chains keep running on reduced hours. What closes is also predictable: independent restaurants, family shops, small operators, banks and government offices. Day trips and classes largely stop. If you are moving between cities during this window, book trains and domestic flights far earlier than feels necessary — Tet is the largest internal migration of the year and the popular corridors sell out weeks ahead.
Vietnam has not published its 2027 days-off schedule yet
As of August 2026, the official 2027 public holiday arrangement had not been announced, and any specific date range circulating online is an estimate.
Here is what is actually settled. Article 112 of the 2019 Labour Code guarantees employees five paid days for Lunar New Year, and the Prime Minister decides the precise arrangement each year according to how the calendar falls. Vietnam's Ministry of Labour typically publishes that decision in October or November of the preceding year: the 2026 schedule, a nine-day break from 14 to 22 February, was issued in November 2025. Once weekends and substitute days are folded in, the statutory pattern produces seven days off, extending to nine when the first day of the lunar year falls between Monday and Wednesday.
In 2027 mùng 1 is a Saturday. That alignment does not favour the nine-day version, so plan around a shorter official break — while remembering that private employers also get some latitude in how they arrange it, splitting the days differently on either side of Tet Day. Check back for the official decision from late October 2026. Our Vietnam festival and public holiday atlas carries the confirmed dates once they are published.
After Tet, the spring festival season begins
The fortnight after Tet is one of the most underrated travel windows in northern Vietnam, and almost nobody plans for it.
The Perfume Pagoda pilgrimage, in Hương Sơn commune south-west of Hanoi, opens on the sixth day of the first lunar month — Thursday 11 February 2027 — and runs across the three spring months, according to Vietnam's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. Pilgrims arrive by rowing boat along the Yến stream between limestone hills, then climb to the Hương Tích cave shrine. The ministry records five to six thousand pilgrims a day in the early lunar-new-year period, and the season as a whole draws well over a million people, with the heaviest weeks falling in the second lunar month, in March. Go early in the morning and expect crowds regardless.
The Lim Festival in Bắc Ninh, north-east of Hanoi, traditionally falls on the twelfth and thirteenth days of the first lunar month — pointing to 17-18 February 2027 — and is built around quan họ, the UNESCO-listed call-and-response folk singing performed between men's and women's groups, some of it from boats. Beyond these two, pagodas across the north run their own spring festivals through February and March. Provincial organising committees confirm exact dates each year, so verify before you build a trip around one.
North and south celebrate differently
The two ends of the country keep the same holiday with visibly different props and a different tempo.
| North | South | |
|---|---|---|
| Blossom | Peach (hoa đào), pink | Apricot / ochna (hoa mai), yellow |
| Cake | Bánh chưng, square | Bánh tét, cylindrical |
| Lucky money | Mừng tuổi | Lì xì |
| Weather | Cold, damp, often grey | Warm and dry |
| Tempo | Longer, more formally observed | Reopens faster and more commercially |
Both major cities empty as migrant workers leave, though the effect is starker in Ho Chi Minh City, which absorbs the largest internal-migration inflow the rest of the year. Northern Tet lands in the cold, damp tail of winter, which is worth factoring into what you pack — see our guide to the best time to visit Vietnam for the regional weather picture.
Etiquette: greetings, lì xì, and what not to do
Learn one phrase, carry a few red envelopes, and avoid three or four things, and you will be fine.
The greeting is Chúc mừng năm mới — happy new year. Add An khang thịnh vượng (peace and prosperity) if you want to go further, or Chúc sức khỏe for health. A little effort with the Vietnamese phrases is disproportionately well received during Tet.
Lì xì, or mừng tuổi in the north, is the lucky-money custom: crisp new notes in a red envelope, handed over with both hands, given to children and to elders rather than between peers. Amounts are symbolic and modest is fine. Recipients traditionally do not open the envelope in front of you.
What to avoid: sweeping the floor or taking out rubbish on mùng 1, which is held to sweep away the household's luck; starting arguments or raising conflict, which is thought to set the tone for the year; and turning up first at someone's door on the morning of mùng 1 unless you have been specifically asked to be that person. Breaking things and giving sharp objects or clocks as gifts are also commonly avoided. Wearing white or black head to toe reads as mourning dress and is best skipped.
So, should you go
Go if you will be based in one city, if you have Vietnamese friends or family who might invite you in, if you want the build-up more than the checklist, and if you can hold your itinerary loosely. Do not go if your trip is short, densely scheduled, day-trip dependent, or budget-tight — the transport surge alone will hurt.
The compromise most people should take: arrive about a week before 6 February 2027, ride the flower markets and the build-up, stay put somewhere you like for the three quiet days, then travel outward into the spring festival season as the country reopens around you. That sequence gets you the best of Tet and very little of the worst.
Limitations
The date and zodiac year here are solid: Tet 2027 is 6 February and it is the Year of the Goat, confirmed against the Vietnamese lunar calendar record and multiple independent sources. Almost everything downstream of that is less certain, and we would rather say so than invent precision.
The official 2027 days-off schedule genuinely does not exist yet. We have described the statutory floor and the historical pattern instead of a date range, and we will update this page when the Ministry of Labour publishes the decision, expected around late October or November 2026. Any site quoting exact 2027 government holiday dates today is guessing.
Festival dates carry a second layer of uncertainty. The Perfume Pagoda opening and the Lim Festival are dated by lunar convention, which converts cleanly to 11 February and 17-18 February 2027, but provincial organising committees confirm and occasionally shift their programmes each year, and the peak weeks at the Perfume Pagoda spread across the second lunar month rather than falling on a fixed date. Treat these as strong indications, not bookings.
Customs vary by family more than any guide can capture. The north-south split in the table is the general pattern, not a rule — plenty of Hanoi families eat bánh tét and plenty of southern households keep northern observances. Regional and generational variation on taboos is wide, and younger urban families often keep them loosely or not at all. If you are hosted by a Vietnamese family, watching what they do is more reliable than anything written here. Finally, this page deliberately avoids quantifying price rises and closure rates; those belong to the companion data piece.