On April 4, at Vietnam Quoc Tu, the Executive Board of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in Ho Chi Minh City officially opened the 1st City Buddhist Congress, term 2026-2031. This is a special event when Ho Chi Minh City was selected by the Central Sangha as the first provincial and city-level "point" congress in the country, opening the series of congresses of localities in the new term.
With the main spirit of "Discipline - Innovation - Effectiveness - Efficiency", this congress not only focuses on improving the quality of operations but also aims to consolidate the organization in a streamlined direction, ensuring strict regulations on personnel work.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Venerable Thich Le Trang, Head of the Executive Board of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in Ho Chi Minh City, emphasized that this is an important occasion to summarize the achievements of the past term and identify strategic goals for the 2026-2031 period with solutions to adapt to the trend of science and technology development.
According to a report from Venerable Thich Thien Quy, Deputy Head cum Chief Secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Buddhist Sangha, the congress had 450 delegates attending. Including 7 delegates from the Patronage Board, 10 delegates from the Central Sangha, 29 guest delegates, 4 government delegates and 400 official delegates.
The event takes place in a special context after the merger of administrative units in 2025, Ho Chi Minh City has become the locality with the largest Buddhist scale in the country with nearly 12,000 monks and nuns and more than 2,300 pagodas.
In the 2022-2027 period, the city's Buddhism has achieved impressive results in monastic affairs and education. In 2025 alone, the church received 177 applications for enrollment and issued 340 monk and nun certificates, while maintaining the annual scale of residence and practice with more than 6,100 practitioners.
In particular, after the merger, the Buddhist education system was expanded with two training institutions at college and intermediate levels. Economic and financial contributions also recorded the figure of more than 3.76 billion VND for general Buddhist activities. The most notable is the mark in social security work when the entire Sangha has coordinated to implement programs with a total budget of more than 4,117 billion VND, making an important contribution to spreading moral values and consolidating the great national unity bloc.
In two working days from April 4 to 5, the congress focused on in-depth discussions on personnel options for the new term with an expected 105 members.
