Festivals and holidays on Phu Quoc

The public holidays in Vietnam's Labour Code are New Year's Day, Lunar New Year (Tet), the Hung Kings commemoration, 30 April, 1 May and National Day on 2 September with one extra day, eleven paid days in all. Tet and the Hung Kings day are lunar dates; the government converts them each year and announces the exact break, often with swapped working days to make a longer run.

Temple and village festivals follow the lunar calendar only. A festival on the 15th day of the tenth lunar month can fall anywhere from early November to early December. To convert a lunar date, use a Vietnamese lunar calendar (Vietnam keeps its own calendar on UTC+7, which occasionally differs from the Chinese one by a day). Where we give a solar date below, we name the calendar we used.

Lunar New Year's Day 2027 is Saturday 6 February. The holiday length is decided by the Prime Minister. In August and September 2026 the Ministry of Home Affairs put forward two options for public employees: seven days from Thursday 4 to Wednesday 10 February 2027, which it recommends, or ten days from Friday 5 to Sunday 14 February. Either way, the first week of February 2027 is when the island will be fullest.

For a sense of scale: in January 2026 the director of the An Giang tourism department said Phu Quoc was practically out of rooms until Tet, and some travel firms had booked nearly two months ahead for groups. The same report warned of fake hotel pages taking deposits.

Whale worship, the cult of Ca Ong, is shared by fishing communities along Vietnam's coast; a 2016 study from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City describes it as practised from Deo Ngang down to Phu Quoc, together with the nghinh Ong festival that welcomes the whale.

We could not find an official calendar for these rites on Phu Quoc. Commercial travel guides place the main one in the middle of the eighth lunar month, which is when the Can Gio festival near Ho Chi Minh City is held, but each village decides its own dates. If you want to attend, ask at your hotel or at the shrine itself a week or two ahead, and treat it as a religious event first.

• If you need quiet and low prices. Tet and the public-holiday breaks are the most expensive and crowded days of the year on the island.
• If the date is a lunar one you have not converted. A festival listed as 'mid-November' in one year can move by two or three weeks the next.
• If you expect a staged show. Dinh Cau and the fishing rites are religious events run by local committees, not performances. Programmes are announced late and can change.
• If your flight home is the morning after the last holiday day. That is when everyone else leaves too.

For the crowd side of these dates see Peak dates; for what to do in the evening around them, see Evening shows.