Festival «Côn Sơn – Kiếp Bạc mùa Thu năm 2026» (Autumn Festival)

   Vietnamese folklore has a saying: the eighth lunar month belongs to the "Father", the third to the "Mother" — and this year, for the first time since the whole complex joined the UNESCO World Heritage list, the nine-day memorial for that "Father" at Côn Sơn – Kiếp Bạc gets a new face: a lantern festival on the Lục Đầu river and a seal-opening rite for tens of thousands of visitors.

   From 26 September to 4 October (16th-24th of the eighth lunar month), the relic site runs a chain of traditional rites: the seal-opening ceremony, handing out roughly 30,000 paper seals to pilgrims, a peace-prayer rite, a procession between the Côn Sơn and Kiếp Bạc grounds, a lantern festival on the Lục Đầu river on the closing nights, and the memorial rite for Trần Hưng Đạo — worshipped here as Đức Thánh Trần — on the main day. Alongside it runs an OCOP and craft-village display, pottery and calligraphy sessions, water-puppet shows, lotus tea tasting, and the unveiling of the joint World Heritage brand identity for Yên Tử – Vĩnh Nghiêm – Côn Sơn, Kiếp Bạc — something none of the previous autumn festivals has had.

   It suits pilgrims who already return to Kiếp Bạc every autumn, folk-culture fans who want to see a lantern festival and water puppets staged right on relic ground, and anyone curious why the whole country still says this general's name eight centuries on — the commander who beat back three Mongol invasions in the 13th century.

   This year marks 726 years since Trần Hưng Đạo's death and 584 since the death of Nguyễn Trãi — the poet and strategist buried at Côn Sơn itself — so the festival carries a double anniversary. Côn Sơn, Kiếp Bạc was inscribed on the World Heritage list together with Yên Tử in Quảng Ninh province and Vĩnh Nghiêm pagoda in Bắc Ninh province, so this autumn's festival is the first to show all three sites under one shared identity. The site keeps its usual admission — 20,000 VND for adults, 10,000 VND for children aged 6 to 16, free under six and for several priority groups; organisers have not announced a separate festival-day fee.

   Nine days, one sacred stretch of land the world has just recognised — which day of the Côn Sơn, Kiếp Bạc autumn will you pick?