If you've lived in Da Nang for more than a year, there's a decent chance your address is wrong, or at least out of date. Districts are gone, wards were merged and renamed, and a whole province was folded into the city. If your bank, your visa paperwork and your landlord's contract don't agree on where you live, this is why.

What happened in 2025

In mid-2025, Vietnam reorganized its local government into two tiers, provinces and centrally run cities on top and commune-level units below, and merged many provinces. Quang Nam was merged into Da Nang. The city's old district layer disappeared, and its wards and communes were consolidated.

The result is one city with 94 commune-level administrative units: wards (phường), communes (xã) and one special zone (đặc khu). Tien Phong cites the 94-unit figure in its October 2026 reporting on land prices. The special zone is Hoang Sa. Special zones are a separate category of commune-level unit in the new system, according to Wikipedia's overview of Vietnam's special zones.

For residents of the old urban core, the practical change is that familiar district names like Hai Chau, Son Tra or Ngu Hanh Son now survive mostly as ward names, covering different areas than before. For the former Quang Nam areas, such as Hoi An, Tam Ky, Dien Ban and the mountain districts, the city name on your address is now Da Nang.

What might change next

On June 29, 2026, the Da Nang People's Council voted unanimously to approve, in principle, turning 10 communes into wards, Nha Dau Tu reported: Hoa Vang, Hoa Tien, Ba Na, Dai Loc, Dien Ban Tay, Chien Dan, Nui Thanh, Tam Anh, Nam Phuoc and Thang Binh. Each would keep its existing boundaries and name. In a consultation, 108,599 of 114,097 households took part, and 99.48% of those voting backed the change.

This is approval of the policy, not the final decision. The city still has to complete the dossier and send it to the national authorities, and the report gave no timeline. If you live in one of those 10 communes, expect "xã" to become "phường" on your paperwork at some point. Nothing changes until it's formally approved.

Why it matters more than it sounds

  • Paperwork: visas, residence registration, bank accounts, land titles and business licenses all carry an address. Mismatches cause delays.
  • Land: the city's land price table is organized by ward and commune, and 37 of the 94 units asked to fix it this autumn, partly because roads were renamed or missing.
  • Services: in the two-tier system, most daily paperwork now happens at the ward or commune level, at public administration service centers, not at a district office.

What to do

  1. Find your current ward or commune name and keep it handy, in Vietnamese with diacritics.
  2. Update your address with your bank and on any long-term documents when they come up for renewal.
  3. If you rent, check that your landlord's residence registration uses the current ward. (See our guide to moving here.)
  4. If you're in one of the 10 communes above, watch for the final decision.

The map will settle eventually. Until it does, the address on your door may be the least reliable document you own.

Sources

This story was compiled by the Da Nang Voice news desk from the published sources listed above. Facts, figures and quotes are attributed to those sources; Da Nang Voice did not conduct interviews for it unless the text says so. Corrections are dated and noted at the top of the story. Read our corrections policy. Spotted an error? Tell us.