Saigon Opera House, Ho Chi Minh City: Shows, Tickets, Going Inside

The Saigon Opera House, officially the Ho Chi Minh City Municipal Theatre (Nha hat Thanh pho), is the French-era theatre at 7 Lam Son Square, where Le Loi boulevard meets Dong Khoi street in the old centre. You can’t tour it on your own: the way inside is a show ticket. The regular show is the A O Show, a Vietnamese bamboo circus by Lune Production; at the time of writing (November 2026) it is on most evenings at 6 pm, with seats at 800,000, 1,250,000 and 1,750,000 VND. On selected evenings the city’s ballet, opera and symphony company, HBSO, takes the stage instead. From outside, the facade costs nothing and sits a few minutes’ walk from Nguyen Hue walking street and the Rex and Continental hotels.

Can you go inside the Saigon Opera House without a show?

No, not as a regular visitor. The theatre has no website of its own that we could find, and neither of the companies that perform there, Lune Production and HBSO, offers a daytime tour on its site. No newspaper has reported one either. The opera house tours you may read about online are at the Hanoi Opera House, which started guided visits in 2017. In Saigon you see the auditorium by buying a seat: 800,000 VND is the cheapest A O Show ticket, while HBSO gives its prices only at the box office, so one of its concerts may cost less.

The outside is free at any hour. You can photograph the facade from the pavement on Le Loi or from the small park across the road.

What shows are on at the Saigon Opera House in 2026?

Two companies fill most of the calendar. Lune Production runs the A O Show on most evenings, and HBSO, the Ho Chi Minh City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera, stages ballet, opera and concerts on selected nights. Some dates have neither, so check the calendar before you plan an evening around it.

A O Show: times, ticket prices and what it is

The A O Show is Lune Production’s bamboo circus. Its name comes from “Lang Pho”, village and city, and it contrasts life in the southern countryside with the noise of a fast-growing city. Lune describes it as a mix of bamboo circus, acrobatics, dance and theatre, with live music drawn from southern Vietnamese work songs. It lasts about one hour with no interval.

At the time of writing, November 2026, Lune’s booking calendar (read on 4 November) shows a 6 pm performance on most dates up to New Year, plus a second show at 8:30 pm on 2, 9, 16, 25 and 31 December. It is not nightly: no A O Show is scheduled on, for example, 7, 8, 14, 21, 22 and 29 November. Check your date on Lune’s calendar before you plan the evening around it. The seating plan has 468 seats in three price tiers:

• aah! (A): 800,000 VND
• ooh! (O): 1,250,000 VND
• wow! (W): 1,750,000 VND

Those are Lune’s prices for an adult on a November 2026 date; resellers such as Headout list the same three tiers from 800,000 VND. Child tickets are for ages 5 to 12, children under 5 are not admitted, and Lune asks you to bring the child’s passport. Online booking closes two hours before the show, and one booking takes up to 10 tickets. Lune’s hotline, +84 845 181 188, answers from 8 am to 8 pm.

Two of Lune’s rules are worth knowing before you go. Only bottled water is allowed in the auditorium, no other food or drink. And you can’t take photos or film during the show: in visitors’ videos of Lune’s shows, vloggers stop filming at the door and talk about the show afterwards.

Are Teh Dar and The Mist still on in Saigon?

Not at the opera house, going by Lune’s own listings. In November 2026 Lune lists only the A O Show for Ho Chi Minh City. Teh Dar, its show about the Central Highlands peoples, is listed at the Hoi An Lune Center, and Lang Toi (My Village) at its Hanoi venue on Trang Tien street. The Mist does not appear on Lune’s 2026 show lists at all. At least one ticket reseller still lists Teh Dar and The Mist at the Saigon Opera House; book on luneproduction.com, where the calendar shows what is actually on.

HBSO ballet, opera and symphony nights

HBSO is the theatre’s resident company, set up by the city in 1993; its first performance at the Municipal Theatre was on 9 September 1994. Its programme runs on selected evenings; the 2026 dates we checked start at 8 pm. The 2026 season has included Swan Lake on 15, 16, 22 and 23 August, a three-hour production with the orchestra live in the pit, according to Nhan Dan; a concert version of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Vietnamese and English subtitles on 11–12 September; and Giselle on 24–25 October. At the time of writing, the next date listed is a concert of Weber and Rachmaninov on 22 November 2026 at 8 pm.

HBSO does not publish ticket prices online, and no current price list has appeared in the press. Ask at the HBSO box office in the theatre basement, 7 Lam Son Square, or call 028 3823 7295. The programme is posted on hbso.org.vn, in Vietnamese.

Is there a dress code at the Saigon Opera House?

There is no written one. Neither Lune nor HBSO publishes a dress rule, and travel guides suggest smart casual. Neat everyday clothes are fine for the A O Show; you may want to dress up a little for an HBSO ballet or opera night.

A short history of the Saigon Opera House

The French built the theatre at the end of the 19th century. Work began in 1897 or 1898, depending on the source (VnExpress and PLO give 1897, Nguoi Lao Dong and Nhan Dan 1898), and it opened on 1 January 1900 as the Opera de Saigon. Nguoi Lao Dong and Nhan Dan name three French architects, Felix Olivier, Eugene Ferret and Ernest Guichard; VnExpress credits Olivier with the design. Vietnamese papers describe the style as flamboyant Gothic and say it took its cue from the Opera Garnier in Paris.

According to Nguoi Lao Dong, some of the ornate facade decoration was removed in 1943, and in 1944 Allied bombing badly damaged the building and stopped performances. After 1954 it was repaired and turned into a parliament, first the National Assembly and then the Lower House of the Republic of Vietnam (Nguoi Lao Dong dates this from 1955). It became a theatre again after 1975.

For Saigon’s 300th anniversary in 1998 the city spent 25 billion VND restoring it close to its original look, including the statues of the muses and the floral decoration on the front. In 2008, according to Nhan Dan, the metal roof was replaced with tiles and the seats, sound and lighting were renewed. The building is a national architectural and artistic relic. In 2023 the city council approved a further 337 billion VND (about US$13.8 million) restoration, expected to take more than three years and to be done in phases so the theatre keeps operating. That plan had building work starting in 2025, but a draft mid-2026 report from the city’s culture department still lists the theatre among projects expected to start between 2026 and 2030.

How to get to the Saigon Opera House

Most visitors walk, since it sits in the middle of the old French quarter. Distances on foot, measured on OpenStreetMap:

• Hotel Continental: across Dong Khoi, about 60 m
• Caravelle hotel: across Lam Son Square, about 150 m
• Top of Nguyen Hue walking street, by the Ho Chi Minh statue: about 300 m, under five minutes
• Rex Hotel, at the corner of Nguyen Hue and Le Loi: a few minutes’ walk
• Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Central Post Office: about 0.7 km each
• Ben Thanh Market: about 0.9 km, straight down Le Loi

From Tan Son Nhat airport it is 7.6–7.8 km by road. Visitors’ videos also show the double-decker hop-on hop-off city buses stopping beside the theatre, and some people buy their bus ticket there.

Opera House metro station

Metro Line 1, from Ben Thanh to Suoi Tien, opened to passengers at 10 am on 22 December 2024, and Opera House station (Ga Nha hat Thanh pho) is one of its three underground stops. VnExpress describes it as four levels deep, about 36 m below ground and about 400 m from Ben Thanh station, with brown iron patterns on part of the ceiling that echo the theatre above. In visitors’ videos the exits come up near the Rex corner, across from the theatre, and the station runs straight into the basement of the Union Square mall, where cafes have opened. If you ride one stop from Ben Thanh, you come up a few minutes’ walk from the theatre steps.

What is near the Saigon Opera House?

The opera house is the east end of Le Loi and faces down it towards Ben Thanh Market. Dong Khoi runs past its side, towards the cathedral one way and the river the other, with the Continental on the opposite corner and the Caravelle across the square. Nguyen Hue walking street is one block west: from the theatre steps, the Ho Chi Minh statue at its top end is about 300 m away, and the riverside end of the street about 0.8–0.9 km.

That makes an easy loop on foot: the opera house, then up Dong Khoi to Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Central Post Office, about 0.7 km away, and back down Nguyen Hue in the evening. If you are planning Hanoi too, its opera house is a different building with its own tours; see our Hanoi Opera House guide.

When is the best time to photograph the opera house?

Late afternoon and after dark. The facade faces south-west down Le Loi, so it is in direct sun in the afternoon and backlit early in the morning. After sunset the front is floodlit. For a straight-on shot, stand in the park opposite, where the banner photo at the top of this page was taken.

See the opera house on a street food tour

Our Premiere Street Food Tour in Ho Chi Minh City is a half-day evening tour on vintage Vespas. A driver picks you up at your hotel at 6 pm, and the tour page lists the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Central Post Office, the Saigon Opera House and Nguyen Hue walking street among its sights, between food stops such as rice pancakes, spring rolls and banana sticky rice. It runs until about 10 pm, so it clashes with both A O Show times; book the show for a different evening.

Premiere Street Food Tour in Ho Chi Minh City

0.5 day

Start from:  $90 /person

FAQ

Sources: Lune Production, A O Show page and booking calendar (read 4 November 2026); Lune Production FAQ; Lune Production on the venue; HBSO programme; HBSO history; Nhan Dan on Swan Lake (July 2026); Nguoi Lao Dong on the theatre’s history (2013); Nhan Dan on the theatre (2011); VnExpress on the restoration plan (2023); VnExpress International (2023); PLO (2023); HCMC Department of Culture and Sports, heritage report (2026); VnExpress on the underground stations (2024); Tuoi Tre on the Line 1 opening; VietnamPlus; SGGP on the Hanoi Opera House tours (2017); distances measured on OpenStreetMap; visitor observations from YouTube videos (2023–2026), counted only where three or more channels agree. Banner photo: Quang Vuong / Pexels, cropped.