Đà Nẵng has quietly built one of Việt Nam's more interesting museum scenes, and its first Đà Nẵng Art Creatives Connection (DACC 2026) is putting it centre stage. Running until November 8, the event gathers artists, curators, artisans and creative communities from Việt Nam and the wider region under the theme History of Tomorrow.
The action is split between two venues with very different characters: the Đà Nẵng Museum and the Đà Nẵng Museum of Chăm Sculpture, which houses the country's remarkable collection of ancient Champa carving. Exhibitions, contemporary dance, workshops, panel discussions and guided art tours run across both sites, and they're drawing a mix of local art students, older locals and international visitors.
The headline performance lands on November 5 at the Đà Nẵng Museum. Pajieng — meaning Rebirth in the Chăm language — is the second experimental work in artist Vạn Huyền's long-term project Haluw (Origin), which explores Chăm identity from the perspective of a new-generation Chăm person. It's framed as a stream of reflections on the people who once crossed this land and the voices that have faded.
If you're visiting in the morning, the Daily Heritage Tours are worth planning around. They run 9am to 10am at the Museum of Chăm Sculpture and walk you through the ancient Champa collections with context on the culture behind them. There's also an open reading room and discussion space curated by Lê Nguyên Phương and Mai Nguyên Anh, showing artists' publications and photobooks by contemporary Vietnamese photographers from the past three years — an unusually good window into Đà Nẵng's independent publishing scene, with themes spanning memory, family, labour and social change.
An international exchange exhibition adds Thai contemporary artists Panachai Chaijirarat, Punyisa Silparassamee and Marisa Srijunpleang, each approaching history through fragments: material traces, family memory, craft techniques and passed-down stories rather than tidy narratives.
Practically speaking, it's a cheap cultural add-on to a central Việt Nam trip. Exhibitions and activities at the Đà Nẵng Museum are free. The Chăm Sculpture Museum requires tickets for its exhibitions, but workshops, talks and performances there are free if you register in advance — worth doing early, as the performance and heritage tours are the drawcards.
For travellers, this is exactly the kind of event that reframes a city usually treated as a beach-and-bridge stop. Đà Nẵng sits conveniently between Hội An and the Imperial City of Huế, so an art morning here slots naturally into a central coast itinerary. You'll come away knowing far more about the Chăm civilisation — one of Southeast Asia's oldest cultures — than any quick museum dash would give you. Just note the event ends November 8, so dates are tight.
