Festival «Ngày Ngôn ngữ châu Âu 2026» (European Day of Languages)

   Nine European embassies and cultural institutes move into one compound for a single afternoon, each bringing its own language along. You walk from table to table, try a sentence in Polish, hear Czech for the first time in your life, and ask a native speaker the things a textbook never answers.

   This year's message is Languages Unite — Ngôn ngữ kết nối chúng ta, and the line that frames the programme is short: every language opens a new view of the world. Entry is free and no advance registration is required, so turning up is enough.

   The list of co-organisers shows the scale: the Italian Embassy in Hanoi, Institut français in Vietnam, the Délégation Wallonie-Bruxelles in Vietnam, the Goethe-Institut, British Council Vietnam, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, the Embassy of Ireland, the Embassy of Ukraine, and Czech Centre Hanoi, which belongs to the Embassy of the Czech Republic.

   What the afternoon is good for:

• — the range of European languages gathered in one place;
• — the culture and particular character of each country;
• — a first go at languages you have never studied;
• — direct conversation with embassies, cultural institutes and education bodies;
• — the case for language learning at any age, from the people who teach it;
• — other people who care about languages and cultures.

   The European Day of Languages is not a Hanoi invention. The Council of Europe launched it in 2001, the European Year of Languages, and it has been marked annually in many cities since. The European Union alone now has 24 official languages, so even a whole afternoon only scratches the surface.

   The event suits pupils and students choosing a second foreign language, anyone who has studied a European language and wants to hear native speech again, parents coming along with a child, and people merely curious about what Ukrainian or Czech actually sounds like.

   The venue is a familiar cultural institute in the Ba Đình district, close to the Temple of Literature and within walking distance of much of the centre. Keep the whole afternoon free: getting through the tables faster than planned would be the waste here.