This weekend
in Da Nang.

HORECFEX Vietnam runs Thursday 20 and Friday 21 August at the Ariyana Convention Centre, 8am to 6:30pm both days. It is the trade event for hotels, restaurants and cafes, and this year it is the biggest one Central Vietnam has held.

Nearly 100 exhibitors, around 55 speakers from 20 countries, and more than 40 talks and panels across two days. The subjects are hotel management, digital tools, artificial intelligence and sustainability, and there are live demonstrations of things most people have only read about: service robots, smart glasses, VR headsets.

There is also a bartender and barista competition, food and drink workshops, and a spa and wellness track.

The part worth knowing: entry is free, and so is the live translation. If you run a cafe, a bar, a restaurant or a homestay in this city, this is the one event in the year aimed squarely at you, and it costs you nothing but the trip out to Furama. Register and see the two day programme at https://horecfex.com/en/

Danang Summer Fest runs Thursday 20 to Sunday 23 August at the Ariyana International Convention Centre. Four days and four nights, free for all of them, organised by Danang 365.

More than 50 stalls: international food, tropical cocktails, craft beer, gourmet ice cream, summer fashion and handicrafts. Live music from Vietnamese and international artists, workshops, play areas for children and a boardwalk style games zone.

Running through it is Da Nang’s Got Talent, more than 100 acts, with qualifiers Thursday to Saturday and the grand final on Sunday. The organisers expect around 20,000 people, and they say plainly that it is meant as a meeting ground for residents, visitors and the expat community.

Here is the useful part. It is the same venue as HORECFEX and the days overlap. If you go out to Furama on Thursday or Friday you can do the trade show in the day and the festival in the evening, and neither one charges you to walk in.

The Dai Binh Culture and Tourism Festival runs Friday 21 to Sunday 23 August in Dai Binh Village, Nong Son.

Dai Binh is the fruit village, the one people from Da Nang drive out to when the orchards are heavy. For three days it puts on a countryside market, a traditional food area, folk performances and an exhibition called Memories of Dai Binh. There is a running race, Discover Dai Binh 2026, and you can camp, cook traditional dishes and walk through the garden houses.

It is about an hour and a half from the city and it is the opposite of everything else on this list.

The Pickleball World Cup comes to Da Nang from Saturday 30 August to Saturday 6 September, at Tien Son Sports Arena, Tuyen Son Sports Village and courts around the city.

The organisers expect more than 4,000 athletes from around 80 countries. That is a genuinely large international sporting event, in this city, for a week.

If you have watched pickleball arrive in Da Nang over the last two years and wondered how far it goes, this is the answer.

Hoi An Creative Week runs Friday 28 August to Tuesday 2 September, across Song Hoai Square, the An Hoi sculpture garden, the ancient town and the craft villages.

Exhibitions, performances, talks, workshops and hands-on sessions, with GPS maps and QR codes so you can walk it yourself rather than following a group.

It runs into the National Day holiday, so expect the town to be full.

We are moving into the wetter part of the year. Late August in Da Nang can still give you a run of clear hot days, and it can also give you an afternoon that empties the sky in twenty minutes.

Mornings are the safer bet for anything outdoors. Keep an indoor option for the afternoon, and check the forecast the morning of rather than the week before, because it changes.