The Dragon Bridge fire show, in five minutes

Show time

21:00 Fri–SunMajor public holidays too

What actually happens

The bridge itself is a dragon-shaped road bridge across the Han River, and the show is its head: a burst of fire for two minutes, then three minutes of water sprayed out over the river. It is a piece of municipal engineering theatre rather than a festival, which is why it lasts five minutes and not an evening.

The city publishes the schedule: 21:00 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday every week, plus major public holidays. The page we checked is dated 14 March 2025 and was still current on 2 November 2026, but treat it as a weekly schedule rather than a promise for your specific night.

Where to stand

There are three options, and they are different experiences. The east bank, on the My Khe side, puts you closest to the head and the water; the west bank gives you the bridge side-on with the city behind it; the bridge deck itself is where the traffic goes and closes to vehicles during the show.

For photographs, the west bank at the level of the river promenade is the more useful angle: you get the dragon's profile, the reflection and the crowd, rather than a face-on view of the head with a wall of phones in front of it.

Getting there, and leaving

The bridge is 2.6 km from Han Market — three minutes — and 2.4 km from My Khe, also three minutes. From the airport it is 6.3 km, about ten minutes. Everything is close, which is exactly why the roads around it jam in the twenty minutes before and after.

The practical move is to arrive at 20:30, watch at 21:00, and walk away rather than call a car at 21:06. Ten minutes on foot puts you outside the jam, and the riverfront in either direction is a reasonable place to be at that hour.

If you are coming for dinner first, eat on the west bank and walk over; if you are coming from the beach, a Grab to the east bank and a walk back across is the shorter version.

What the schedule does not promise

The second gap is the holiday list. "Major public holidays" is what the city writes; which holidays in a given year count is not published on that page, so a Tet week may or may not have a show on a weekday.

What is certain is the shape: five minutes, three evenings a week, and a bridge you can walk across at any other time of day for nothing.

The bridge on any other day

For the other 160-odd hours of the week it is a road bridge with a dragon on it, and that is a good thing: you can walk across it, look back at the river, and be at Han Market in ten minutes without a crowd.

The riverfront on both sides is the closest thing Da Nang has to a promenade. In the evening people run, fish and sit on the steps; on a weekend the east bank fills with families and the bridge lights come on at dusk.

If you are staying on the beach strip, the bridge is the marker between the two cities Da Nang has: the beach side and the river side. Walking across it once is the clearest way to understand the geography.

A rest hour near the end of the day

Questions people ask