If your image of Vietnam involves lanterns and limestone karsts, it's time to add gongs to the list. The Central Highlands province of Gia Lai kicked off its International Gong Festival on November 7 in Pleiku, the centrepiece of a wider celebration called the 2026 Gong Festival – Chu Dang Ya Volcano – Wild Sunflower Week, running until November 8 in Bien Ho Commune.

The scale is impressive for a provincial event: nearly 300 artisans from 39 delegations representing ten cities and provinces — Gia Lai, Quang Tri, Hue and Da Nang among them — performed for thousands of locals plus domestic and international visitors. The programme leaned into the music's roots, with gong medleys evoking the rice harvest and the ritual carrying of water to the village, plus dances honouring peace and prosperity.

There was big news alongside the performances. The province announced that the Ko Do gong set has been recognised by the Prime Minister as a national treasure. This Jrai artefact, dating from the late 19th to early 20th century, comprises eight handcrafted gongs — five flat, three bossed — prized for their warm, resonant blend of sound. One Jrai family has cared for the set for over a century, using it in rituals and major community events. Its real worth, officials stress, isn't just rarity but the tuning knowledge, performance tradition and ancestral memory encoded in each note.

The festival also nods to bigger heritage credentials. Provincial People's Committee chairman Pham Anh Tuan highlighted that the Central Highlands Gong Cultural Space was named by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity back in 2005. For the Central Highlands — and Vietnam broadly — that status remains a point of pride, and events like this are how the tradition stays alive rather than museum-bound.

Beyond the opening night, the week includes ethnic music performances by clubs, bands and art troupes, a reenactment of the Jrai new communal house celebration, and an exhibition dedicated to the Gia Lai Gong Cultural Space. Add the wild sunflowers and the dormant Chu Dang Ya volcano in the festival's very name, and you have a nicely layered reason to point a Central Highlands road trip at Pleiku in early November.

For travellers, this is the kind of event that opens a door most visitors drive past. Gia Lai sits well off the classic Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh trail, and its gong culture belongs to the Jrai and other highland ethnic groups rather than the lowland Vietnamese mainstream. Timing a trip to the festival week means hearing these instruments in context — performed by the communities that use them, not staged for tourists on a random Tuesday.