District 2 stopped existing in 2021.
Not in July last year, when Ho Chi Minh City abolished its districts — four years before that, when District 2 was merged with District 9 and Thu Duc District to form Thu Duc City, on 1 January 2021. Everyone carried on saying District 2 anyway: estate agents, schools, delivery drivers, parents. It was the name people understood.
That is the useful thing to know about the change that happened last year. Official names move on a fixed date. Everyday names move whenever people feel like it, which is usually much later — and in Ho Chi Minh City right now, both are in use at once.
What changed, and when
On 1 July 2025, Vietnam’s redrawn administrative map took effect. The direction had been set in April by Resolution 60-NQ/TW, a resolution of the Party’s Central Committee rather than a law; the legal instruments that carried it out followed in June. Three things happened at once.
- The district level was abolished nationally. The constitutional amendment passed on 16 June 2025 took local government from three working levels to two — province or city, then ward or commune — and ended district-level units from 1 July. There is no longer a district sitting between them.
- The country went from 63 provinces and cities to 34, under Resolution 202/2025/QH15, passed by the National Assembly on 12 June 2025.
- Ho Chi Minh City absorbed two neighbouring provinces — Binh Duong and Ba Ria–Vung Tau.
Ho Chi Minh City’s own new wards were then set out separately, in Resolution 1685/NQ-UBTVQH15, issued by the National Assembly Standing Committee on 16 June 2025. The result is that the enlarged city is now made up of 168 commune-level units, of which 102 sit inside what used to be the city’s own boundaries.
So the numbered districts are gone as administrative units. Not renamed. Gone.
The names, side by side
The areas families ask about most, and what they are called now.
- District 1 — Sài Gòn, Bến Thành, Tân Định, Cầu Ông Lãnh
- Thao Dien, An Phu, Thu Thiem (the old District 2) — An Khánh
- District 3 — Bàn Cờ, Xuân Hòa, Nhiêu Lộc
- District 7, Phu My Hung — Tân Thuận, Phú Thuận, Tân Mỹ, Tân Hưng
- Binh Thanh — Bình Thạnh, Gia Định, Bình Lợi Trung, Thạnh Mỹ Tây, Bình Quới
Two things are worth noticing.
One old district usually became several wards. District 7 is now spread across four of them. So “District 7” does not translate into a single new name — which is part of why people keep saying District 7.
Thao Dien is not a ward any more. It was, until 2025. It is now part of An Khánh, a ward created by Resolution 1685/NQ-UBTVQH15 of 16 June 2025 and operating from 1 July. The resolution folds five former units into it: the wards of Thủ Thiêm, An Lợi Đông, Thảo Điền and An Khánh, together with the remaining part of An Phú ward. That is a good deal more ground than Thao Dien ever meant.
So the three names are three different kinds of thing. An Khánh is the administrative unit that exists today. Thảo Điền is a neighbourhood name, still in everyday use, which was also a ward until 2025. District 2 is a district that has not existed since the start of 2021.
That matters when you are comparing preschools. “In An Khánh” now covers what used to be five separate neighbourhoods, with different characters and quite different journeys to school. It is no longer a useful answer on its own.
Which name do you actually type?
This is where honest guidance gets thin, so here is what is known and what is not.
What is established: the ward names above are the official ones. What is not established is how quickly every school office, bank, delivery app and government counter will expect them. Vietcetera, writing three weeks after the change, described the situation as a “patchwork of old and new”, and noted it was unclear how uniform the timeline for updating details would be. More than a year on, that still describes most days.
What that means in practice:
- For anything official — residency paperwork, a school enrolment form, a bank account, a contract — use the ward name, and write the address the way the organisation asks for it. If a form still has a field labelled “district”, ask the person in front of you what belongs in it rather than guessing.
- For a taxi, a delivery or directions, the old name is usually still the one that works, because it is the one the driver and the app both know. Thao Dien will get you to Thao Dien.
- For searching — property listings, school directories, community groups — try both. Most listings have not been updated, and some never will be.
- Keep both to hand for now. Giving an address to someone new? The ward name with the old one in brackets removes the ambiguity in a single line.
None of this is a rule we can promise. It is what the change looks like from the outside, and the safest habit is to ask rather than assume.
What this doesn’t mean
It does not mean your address is invalid, your paperwork is void, or anything you have signed has stopped working. Reorganisations of this kind carry transition arrangements, and for most families the practical effect is paperwork catching up over time rather than anything urgent.
It does not mean the old names are disappearing from speech either. Saigon has not been the city’s official name since 1976, and people still say it every day. Thao Dien will be Thao Dien for a long time yet.
If you are still in the middle of arriving, moving to Vietnam with children covers the rest of the settling-in list.
The reason to understand the change is not compliance. It is that a school’s address, a map result and a friend’s recommendation can all describe the same place and look like three different ones.
How we handle areas at Tiny Circle
We show the name parents actually use.
Every listing carries an area label like Thao Dien, An Phu or Phu My Hung, because that is what people search for and how they describe where they live. The street address on a listing is copied from the provider’s own published information, word for word — so where a business has moved to ward names you will see the ward name, and where it has not you will see the old one. We do not rewrite either.
That is deliberate. Tidying every address into the new system would mean asserting a version the business itself has not published, and a wrong address on a listing costs a parent an afternoon.
If you find a listing whose address no longer matches what the provider shows, tell us. There is a Suggest a correction link on every page, and it reaches a person.
If you already know which part of the city you want, we keep two pages for this one: preschools in District 2 and children’s classes and activities in District 2.
Sources
Every fact in this guide was verified on 19 September 2026 against the resolutions themselves:
- Resolution 1685/NQ-UBTVQH15 — National Assembly Standing Committee, 16 June 2025, published in the Official Gazette. Arranges Ho Chi Minh City’s commune-level units; clause 78 of Article 1 creates phường An Khánh from the wards of Thủ Thiêm, An Lợi Đông, Thảo Điền and An Khánh together with the remaining part of An Phú. The new authorities began operating on 1 July 2025. Full text.
- Resolution amending the Constitution — passed and in force 16 June 2025. Moves local government to two levels and ends district-level administrative units from 1 July 2025.
- Resolution 202/2025/QH15 — National Assembly, 12 June 2025. Reduces 63 provinces and cities to 34, and merges Bình Dương and Bà Rịa–Vũng Tàu into Ho Chi Minh City.
- Resolution 60-NQ/TW — eleventh plenum of the 13th Party Central Committee, 12 April 2025. The policy direction for the reorganisation. It is a Party resolution, not a law, and it did not itself create any ward.
- Resolution 1111/NQ-UBTVQH14 — National Assembly Standing Committee, 9 December 2020, in force 1 January 2021. Merges District 2, District 9 and Thu Duc District into Thu Duc City. This is when District 2 ceased to exist.
- A Post-Merger Guide To Ho Chi Minh City — Vietcetera, 27 July 2025. Secondary, and used only for context: the 168 and 102 counts above, and the “patchwork of old and new” description. Every ward name in this guide comes from Resolution 1685/NQ-UBTVQH15 itself.