Ho Chi Minh City
King's College School Wimbledon Announces Its Ho Chi Minh City Campus
One of Britain's most storied independent schools held a formal launch event in Saigon on 9 May, confirming an August 2027 opening in the city's fast-growing Global City district.
King's College School Wimbledon marked a significant step in its Southeast Asian expansion on Friday when it formally launched its forthcoming Ho Chi Minh City campus at an event attended by city education officials and the British Deputy Consul General. According to VnExpress International, the school is slated to open in August 2027, serving students from kindergarten through high school, and will be governed and quality-assured directly by the Wimbledon parent school to ensure an authentic King's education.
The campus at 179 Vo Nguyen Giap in An Khanh Ward spans nearly two hectares inside The Global City urban development, roughly ten minutes from Thao Dien and twenty minutes from the central business district. Facilities confirmed at the launch include a 25-metre indoor swimming pool, a 500-seat theatre, a 7-a-side football field, indoor sports halls, science laboratories, and dedicated spaces for the performing and creative arts.
A second Southeast Asian campus for KCS
The Ho Chi Minh City school is King's second international campus in the region, following the Bangkok school that opened in September 2020 and has since grown to more than 1,600 students. Founding Head Kieran McLaughlin confirmed that pupils will follow the IGCSE and A-Level pathways, with the school expected to reach a capacity of around 1,500 students, opening with roughly two classes per year group in its first year of operation. Tuition fees have not been published, though McLaughlin said they would be pitched "at the premium end."
Anne Cotton, head of KCS Wimbledon and honorary principal of the new campus, confirmed that Vietnamese staff will be trained to meet UK quality standards through teacher exchange programmes, mirroring the model used in Bangkok. King's was ranked fifth globally in the HSBC Hurun Education Global Highschools 2025 report and is a member of the Eton Group of schools, placing it among a small number of institutions whose overseas expansions tend to attract significant attention from premium-market families across Asia.
UK education exports and Vietnam's ambitions
The launch sits within a broader push by British schools into Vietnam. Uppingham's Hung Yen campus is due to open in August 2026, and Rugby School has announced a Hanoi campus for September of the same year. Nguyen Van Hieu, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, said King's presence in the city demonstrates the "trust, long-term commitment, and serious investment of international partners" in Vietnamese education. The UK government's new International Education Strategy, announced in January 2026, identifies Vietnam as one of five priority markets for transnational education as it targets £40 billion in education export value by 2030.