Festival «Thiết kế Sáng tạo Hà Nội 2026» (creative design)

   For ten days at the end of November, Hanoi turns itself into an open-air design studio: Đồng Xuân market, the 36 old trading streets, the island in the middle of the Red River and the city's park network all become places to exhibit, perform and experiment at once.

   The Hanoi Festival of Creative Design 2026 runs from 20 to 29 November 2026. The opening is on 20 November at Đông Kinh Nghĩa Thục Square, together with the «Thiết kế Sáng tạo Hà Nội 2026» award ceremony, whose categories are urban design, creative architecture, public art, creative products, community projects and creative heritage.

   The season has five zones:

• — Heritage Space — Đồng Xuân - Bắc Qua market and the Đồng Xuân cultural industry centre, the festival's core;
• — Kẻ Chợ Space — the Old Quarter with its 36 trading streets, where «creative guild streets» are being formed;
• — Future Space — the park network: international pavilions, outdoor Fab-labs, workshops for schoolchildren and students;
• — Ecology Space — the island in the Red River, with landscape art and circular design;
• — Community Space — the whole city: embassies, museums, theatres, universities, malls and cafés.

   The theme of the 2026 season is the creative economy, and that is the biggest change from previous years. Under the city's Plan 333/KH-UBND, the festival shifts from «holding a creative design festival» to «building an urban creative ecosystem»: its scope is no longer limited to artworks but extends to urban design, public space, social welfare, and proposals for the city's stubborn problems - street order, pollution, flooding, traffic jams and food safety.

   Across those ten days there are exhibitions and performances by Vietnamese and international artists working in music, photography, film, fashion, publishing and games; talks and international exchanges; and sessions that put designers together with craft-village artisans to make things meant to be used, not only displayed.

   The festival is held in the name of the Hanoi People's Committee and the Vietnam Association of Architects, organised by the Department of Culture and Sports with Tạp chí Kiến trúc magazine, and accompanied by the UNESCO Office in Hanoi with the Sovico Group, and UN-HABITAT. Its basis is the commitment Hanoi made on joining the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

   It suits anyone who likes walking and seeing a city from the inside: most of the programme sits in the Old Quarter and in open spaces. Families with small children will get the most out of the park zone; people who work in a craft or a design trade, out of the talks and the craft-village area.

   The day-by-day, venue-by-venue schedule has not been published yet: under the plan, the press conference introducing the programme is expected on 1 November 2026. Check the festival's own site before you go.

   One detail that is often copied wrongly: some outlets write that the festival runs «20 November - 10 December». In the plan, 10 December is a separate closing review, not the festival's last day - by then the programme has long finished.