Pho Day 2025: Elevating Vietnamese rice - Spreading across the globe.

Photo caption — The delegates performed the opening ceremony for the event.

The event was organized by Tuoi Tre Newspaper with the sponsorship of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Cultural Diplomacy - Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Trade Promotion - Ministry of Industry and Trade , the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Industry and Trade, the Vietnam Culinary Culture Association, and several other units.

Pho Day 2025 brought together more than 30 pho stalls with many famous brands from North to South Vietnam such as Pho H'Mong Ha Giang (noodles made from corn kernels), Pho Nho Pho Nui (Pleiku), also commonly known as Pho Hai Bo, Lac Hong Pho (Nam Dinh)... Notably, the event also featured a Vietnamese pho brand from Seoul, South Korea (Pho Khoe).

On December 13th and 14th, Pho Day 2025 is expected to serve over 20,000 bowls of pho to approximately 100,000 visitors. Each bowl of pho at the event will be sold for 40,000 VND, and the organizers will donate at least 10% of the pho sales revenue, along with contributions from readers and partners, to those affected by the recent storms and floods in Dak Lak province (formerly Phu Yen ).

At the opening ceremony, Vice Chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Van Dung stated: "Pho Day 2025 is an opportunity for the city's residents and tourists to enjoy pho – a dish that has become a cultural symbol and a source of national pride for Vietnam. This is also one of the events that stimulates consumption and promotes the city's economy and tourism towards sustainable growth."

According to Mr. Dung, Pho Day, held over many years, has contributed to elevating Vietnamese products, agricultural produce, and brands. The event serves as a practical bridge supporting the food processing industry towards modernization, as well as expanding export opportunities and conquering global markets.

Ms. Phan Thi Thang, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, emphasized that Pho Day 2025 holds special significance as it aligns with the theme "Elevating Vietnamese Rice - Spreading Across Five Continents." Beyond simply honoring culinary culture, the event serves as a prime example of using cuisine to promote the national brand.

“Culture is becoming a soft power of commerce, allowing many Vietnamese products to spread to the world thanks to their distinctive cultural identity, and pho is a vivid example. In the context of deep international integration, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has identified the key objective as diversifying markets and increasing export value. To promote culinary activities, we need to think in terms of increasing export value, viewing cuisine like pho as an opportunity to export an entire value chain,” Deputy Minister Phan Thi Thang said.

Pho Day originated in 2017 as an initiative, and in 2018, December 12th was officially established as "Pho Day". The main goal of Pho Day is to have pho recognized as a world intangible cultural heritage by telling the story of how rice and noodles carry unique cultural, culinary, diplomatic, and economic values. Through this, Pho Day has become a major national festival and has expanded beyond Vietnam under the name "Vietnam Pho Festival", successively visiting Japan, South Korea, and most recently Singapore from 2023 to the present.

In 2025 alone, with the coordinated support of the Vietnamese Embassy, the "Vietnam Pho Festival" in Singapore, held on October 18th and 19th, attracted over 35,000 attendees with numerous culinary and non-culinary activities, serving tens of thousands of meals; in addition to pho, other Vietnamese dishes were also featured. Furthermore, the event facilitated over 400 interactions and exchanges between Vietnamese and Singaporean businesses, resulting in valuable contracts and numerous memoranda of understanding, opening up prospects for deeper exploration and trade connections.

Journalist Tran Xuan Toan, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Tuoi Tre Newspaper and Head of the Organizing Committee for Pho Day 2025, assessed: Looking back over the past nine years, nearly a decade, Pho Day has now become a much-anticipated event for pho lovers and Vietnamese food enthusiasts worldwide. These days, not only in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, but also in many places across the country and around the world such as France, Poland, Australia, Japan... and other places where Vietnamese expatriates live, there are activities to celebrate Pho Day.

Although there are no precise statistics on the number of pho restaurants and bowls of pho served daily globally, the number of people choosing pho for their meals is steadily increasing. Pho is widely available both domestically and internationally, with a rapid increase in the number of pho shops and restaurants serving it. With pho products and ingredients readily available in supermarkets both domestically and internationally, pho has become an iconic symbol of Vietnam worldwide.

Comment (0)