Expo «VIBE 2026» (Vietnam Interior & Build Expo)

   Flooring and stone, kitchens, sanitaryware, lighting, doors, smart-home systems — the things that normally take months of showroom visits and catalogue requests — stand as physical samples under one roof in Ho Chi Minh City. The fair pulls the whole chain onto a single floor: factory, distributor, contractor and design studio. If you are building, renovating or specifying materials for a project in Vietnam, you will settle more questions in one visit here than in a dozen trips across town.

   This is the third edition. It is co-organised by HAWA, the Handicraft and Wood Industry Association of Ho Chi Minh City (founded in 1990, more than 600 member companies nationwide), and SACA, the city's Construction and Building Materials Association, with roughly 500 member firms. The 2026 theme is “Next in Space – Growth in Motion”, split into three layers the organisers call Nation in Motion, Industry in Motion and Living in Motion. More than 700 booths and some 300 companies are planned, with over 15,000 visitors expected.

   The halls are arranged in three groups — interior and interior equipment, construction and building materials, technology and services — holding around twenty-five product categories between them:

   — living room, kitchen and dining, office and children's furniture, plus hotel and project furniture; wood and engineered panels; floor tiles and decorative stone; roof, wall, ceiling and flooring materials;

   — sanitary equipment, lighting and illumination solutions, glass, doors and windows; paint and surface finishing, adhesives, chemicals and additives; carpets, curtains and wallpapers;

   — smart home and smart factory systems, design software and BIM, pipes, fittings and cables, cement and steel, tools, decorative accessories and handicrafts.

   Last year's attendance shows who this is aimed at: 27% architects and designers, 16% company owners, distributors and retailers, 15% investors and contractors, 13% construction engineers. You are dealing with people who make the material rather than resell it. Roughly one visitor in five still came simply to buy — the fair runs on a B2D2C model, factory to designer to end customer — so private clients are as welcome as professionals.

   VIBE has scaled quickly. It debuted in 2024; the 2025 edition drew 150 exhibitors across 550 booths and 15,000 sqm — double the booth count of the year before — and 11,255 visitors over four days. Exhibitors reported more than VND 33.6 billion in orders placed on site, on incomplete figures, and over 87% of them rebooked their space for 2026 straight away.

   A talks programme runs alongside the halls: V-Forum panel discussions with industry experts and policymakers; V-CPD seminars held with the Ho Chi Minh City Association of Architects, carrying continuing professional development credits; V-Connect sessions where suppliers walk through specific solutions; V-Gallery, showing award-winning projects; and V-Night, an evening networking dinner for architects from across the country. Fifteen to twenty seminars and workshops are planned in total.

   Competitions are part of the format. The 2025 edition hosted the final and awards ceremony of the Hoa Mai Design Award, HAWA's furniture design competition, along with the Top Best Booth Awards for stand design. Hands-on workshops ran beside them — rush mat weaving, wood carving, lotus pot painting.

   The scale makes sense against the sector's numbers. Vietnam's wood and wood product exports passed US$17.2 billion for the first time in 2025, up around 6% year on year and accounting for 63.7% of all ASEAN wood exports. Vietnam is the largest supplier of wooden furniture to the United States, holding 45.3% of that import market. The first half of 2026 added another US$8.6 billion, 4.9% ahead of the same period last year. Domestic demand is pulled by construction: the government has set the sector a 14.5% growth target for 2026, with public capital spending up more than 1.6 times on 2025.

   Entry is by visitor registration, and the form can be filled in ahead of time. One practical note — come with a written list of what you are after. Twenty-five product categories will otherwise eat the whole day, and you will leave with an armful of catalogues and no decisions made.