2nd World Cultural Festival opens in Hanoi with 50 countries, international organizations taking part

The event, which runs through October 4, is jointly organized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Hanoi People's Committee to celebrate cultural diversity around the world while promoting Vietnam and its people to international friends.

According to organizers, this year's World Cultural Festival has attracted the participation of 50 countries and international organizations.

With a larger scale and more diverse activities than its first edition last year, the 2026 festival features 45 cultural spaces, 35 food stalls, a film program involving 20 countries, and a fashion space featuring traditional costumes from 15 countries.

The event also brings together 19 international art troupes, promising four days of multicultural musical exchanges.

Vietnam wants to become a regular meeting point for world cultures

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Pham Thi Thanh Tra said heritage is the memory of every nation, but it does not belong only to the past.

Heritage values exist in the present and serve as an important resource for shaping the future, she added.

She noted that the world is constantly changing, with digital technology, artificial intelligence and new forms of communication profoundly transforming the ways people create, receive and spread cultural values.

Vietnam considers culture both the spiritual foundation of society and an important goal, driving force and resource for national development.

In this process, preservation must go hand in hand with promotion; tradition must go with creativity; heritage with contemporary life; and culture with people and development, she stressed.

"We hope the festival will become a regular meeting point for world cultures, an international space for dialogue, creativity and cultural cooperation, where heritage values converge and spread as we work together to shape the future," she said.

What pure policy dialogues sometimes cannot achieve

Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, said cultural diversity is a source of inspiration for creativity, dialogue and mutual understanding, all of which the world urgently needs, particularly during a challenging period marked by conflicts and climate change.

He added that with the recent adoption of the International Decade of Culture for Sustainable Development initiative, it is clear that culture is not a luxury.

The United Nations General Assembly on September 4 proclaimed 2027-36 as the International Decade of Culture for Sustainable Development, establishing a ten-year global framework to harness culture for more inclusive, resilient and sustainable societies.

Initiated by Vietnam, the Decade marks a major step towards placing culture at the heart of the next global development framework.

According to Lazare Eloundou Assomo, culture plays an essential role in the development of societies, how communities build resilience, and how countries seek common ground.

Assomo said a festival like the World Cultural Festival provides something that pure policy dialogues sometimes cannot: an opportunity to directly experience another culture through music, stories, handicrafts and the ways in which that culture is reflected in everyday life.

This, in turn, opens up new dialogues and serves as a reminder of something that can easily be forgotten in policy forums: behind every heritage tradition is a living community with valuable lessons for us all.