Festival «Tuần lễ Sáng tạo Hội An 2026» (Hoi An Creative Week)

   Most visitors meet Hoi An's crafts through a shop window. Here you get the other side of that transaction: you handle the local materials yourself, take part in selected stages of production, and hear from the maker how the object in your hands was actually put together. For the length of the programme the Ancient Town works as one open workshop.

   This year runs under the theme «Hành trình chạm Di sản, chạm Sáng tạo» — «A Journey to Touch Heritage, Touch Creativity», with the local community placed at the centre of the creative process. Four strands sit under it, and they do genuinely different jobs:

   «Chạm truyền thống» (Touch Tradition) — exhibitions on handicrafts, local techniques and folk art forms preserved across generations, paired with hands-on sessions using local materials.

   «Chạm sáng tạo» (Touch Creativity) — a meeting space where artisans, designers, brands and creative collectives present their work in person. Each piece is introduced through its materials, techniques and the idea behind it, and makers use the space to reach customers and find partners.

   «Nghệ cả Làng» — a talk series on the value of traditional crafts, the role of the community and how craft villages adapt to changing conditions, with artisans, experts and designers on the panels.

   «Làng nghề lên số» (Craft Villages Go Digital) — a training programme helping artisans and younger makers with content management, product photography and running stores on e-commerce platforms.

   None of this sits at a single address. The programme runs from Song Hoai Square and the An Hoi Sculpture Garden through the lanes of the Ancient Town and out to museums, craft villages, community venues and creative spaces around town. To hold it together the organisers use GPS-based routes, QR codes, interactive content and small challenges at each stop, so you build your own itinerary instead of following a fixed schedule. Plan it as a walking day rather than a venue visit, and expect performances, museum workshops and craft-village trips along the way.

   The backdrop is worth knowing. Hoi An Ancient Town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, and in 2023 the town also joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of Crafts and Folk Art — which is why the city now treats heritage as working material rather than a display case. National Geographic Traveller (UK) made much the same point in «Beyond the Lanterns — How Hoi An's Creative Scene Is Lighting Up Vietnam», a piece on the galleries, studios and workshops filling in behind the postcard view.

   If you are based in Da Nang or passing through Central Vietnam, this is an easy addition to a day in the Ancient Town and a rare chance to buy straight from the person who made the thing. Families do well here too — children get to do something with their hands instead of filing past exhibits.

   Come early, wear shoes you can walk in, and let the route pull you into the side streets: that is where most of this happens.