Ho Chi Minh City links culture and tourism as V-Pop heads to the US
Ho Chi Minh City is expanding its cultural industry through closer integration of the arts and tourism, while a new concert project aims to bring Vietnamese pop music to North America in late 2026.
A new concert project, V-Beyond Concert, will bring Vietnamese pop music to North America in November 2026, while the Ho Chi Minh City Center for the Arts and the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Promotion Center have joined forces to develop cultural tourism products during the 2026–2030 period.
On the morning of July 22, the Ho Chi Minh City Center for the Arts and the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Promotion Center signed a memorandum of understanding covering cooperation from 2026 to 2030.
The partnership spans a wide range of initiatives.
The two organizations will jointly research and develop tourism products centered on performing arts, cultural heritage and creative spaces, with the goal of gradually transforming artistic performances into tourism products for both domestic and international visitors rather than standalone stage productions.
Three new tourism segments have also been identified as strategic priorities: arts tourism, night-time tourism and festival tourism.
At the same time, promotional activities for artistic programs will be expanded through multiple channels, including media platforms, trade fairs, exhibitions and roadshows. Travel companies, journalists and social media influencers will also be invited to experience the city’s cultural offerings firsthand.
According to Le Hong Son, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Center for the Arts, the center has developed a roadmap to professionalize and modernize its performance programs following the merger of three arts organizations.
Among its productions, the stage show Mo Show has gradually established a strong identity and received positive responses from both audiences and tourists.
Traditional performing arts, including hat boi (classical Vietnamese opera), which is recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage, are also being promoted as distinctive cultural attractions for visitors to Ho Chi Minh City.
Also on July 22, organizers officially unveiled the V-Beyond Concert project in Ho Chi Minh City, aiming to introduce Vietnamese pop music to the global market.
The project’s first destination will be North America, with a concert scheduled for November 21, 2026, at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, a venue with a capacity of approximately 14,000 spectators.
Around 30 artists are expected to perform, including Uprize, a newly debuted idol group.
Explaining the decision to launch the project in North America, the organizers said that after three years of producing entertainment programs in Vietnam, a new generation of Vietnamese artists with the potential to compete internationally has gradually emerged and is now ready to enter larger and more demanding markets.
They also noted that a number of international media reports in recent years have highlighted the rise of Vietnamese popular culture, driven by government policies that place culture among the country’s development priorities and supported by a new generation of creative talent benefiting from affordable internet infrastructure.
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