Trùng Thập on the 10th of the tenth month: the healers' festival
The 10th day of the tenth lunar month is Tết Trùng thập, which sources describe as a festival for traditional healers. Upcoming dates and the points where sources still differ.
Beside the big festivals everyone knows, the Vietnamese lunar year has a few small ones that fewer people remember. The 10th day of the tenth month is one of them: Tết Trùng thập (Double Tenth). The name joins “trùng” (repeated) and “thập” (ten), because day ten meets month ten.
When it falls
Tết Trùng thập is the 10th day of the tenth lunar month. The next three dates, in Vietnam time:
| Lunar year | Lunar date | Solar date |
|---|---|---|
| Bính Ngọ | 10/10 | Wednesday, 18 November 2026 |
| Đinh Mùi | 10/10 | Sunday, 7 November 2027 |
| Mậu Thân | 10/10 | Saturday, 25 November 2028 |
The Vietnamese lunar calendar is worked out in Vietnam time (UTC+7), so it is sometimes one day off from calendars printed elsewhere. The post Rằm and mùng một explains why.
A festival for healers
The articles on this day all repeat one idea: according to the book Dược lễ, around the 10th of the tenth month medicinal plants are at their best, so the day is seen as the festival of traditional healers. We have not read Dược lễ ourselves; this point is reported as the sources at the end of the post give it.
Is it a new-rice festival?
Here the sources differ:
- In some places, people offer new rice (rice from the fresh harvest) on the 10th of the tenth month itself.
- In other places, the new-rice offering is made on the 15th of the tenth month, that is Tết Hạ nguyên, five days later.
One source also calls the 10th of the tenth month “Tết Thường tân”. The others all use the name Trùng thập, so this post does too.
If your family has its own custom for this day, keep to it. The sources we compared do not describe one shared ritual or offering tray for Tết Trùng thập, so this post does not list offerings.
One of the “double” days
Trùng thập belongs to the group of days whose day and month numbers are the same, like the 5th of the fifth month (Đoan Ngọ), the 7th of the seventh month (Qixi) and the 9th of the ninth month (Double Ninth).
Festivals in Qelunai
The month view in Qelunai shows the lunar date and solar term of every day, worked out in Vietnam time right on your phone. In the next update, the calendar will mark traditional festivals, with a Festival section in Day details and an optional reminder one day before (off by default). To look up the lunar date of any day, use the Lunar calendar page.
Sources
Articles are cultural reference, not professional advice. Illustrations drawn by AI.