Vietnam Visa

The official e-Visa portal, the ninety-day stay it now allows, and the rules to clear at Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City immigration.

Vietnam used to be the country in Southeast Asia where you actually had to visit a consulate — long forms, agency middlemen, faxed approval letters from a hotel in Hanoi. Since August 2023 that has all gone. The e-Visa is now open to citizens of every country, the maximum stay is ninety days, and you can apply, pay, and download the document yourself in about ten minutes. The page below covers what to put in the form and what to do once you land.

Table of Contents

e-Visa

The e-Visa is the route ninety percent of tourists use today. It’s open to all nationalities, processes in about three working days, and replaces the old approval-letter / visa-on-arrival system for almost everyone.

The form asks for the exact port of entry — an airport, land border, or seaport. Pick the one matching your booked flight (Noi Bai for Hanoi, Tan Son Nhat for Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang International for central Vietnam). You can usually exit through a different port without trouble, but the entry port must match.

The portal sometimes flags sessions from foreign IPs; if the page won’t load or the payment fails, try a different browser or a Vietnamese VPN. Avoid third-party “e-visa” sites — they charge USD 50–100 for the same form and add nothing of value.

Visa Exemption (45 Days)

Citizens of thirteen countries get visa-free entry to Vietnam for up to forty-five days, single entry: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Belarus, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. The exemption was extended from fifteen to forty-five days in August 2023. There’s nothing to apply for — turn up at immigration with a valid passport and you’re stamped in. If you want longer than forty-five days, multiple entries, or you’re from one of these countries but starting a slow tour of the region, the e-Visa is still the better choice.

Visa-exempt stays generally cannot be extended inside Vietnam — you have to leave and re-enter, and the next exemption only kicks in after thirty days outside. Plan accordingly.

Visa on Arrival

Vietnam still technically operates a visa-on-arrival scheme, but it now requires a pre-arranged approval letter from a Vietnamese sponsor (typically a travel agency that charges USD 15–25 for the letter), arrival only at one of five international airports, and a stamping fee in cash on landing. With the e-Visa now open to everyone, there is almost no reason to use VoA — it’s slower, more expensive, and only works for air arrivals. Skip it unless an agent specifically tells you the e-Visa won’t work for your route.

Approved Ports of Entry

The e-Visa works at a fixed list of international ports — thirteen airports, sixteen land borders, and thirteen seaports. The major ones tourists actually use:

Passport, Funds, Onward Ticket

Extensions & Overstay

e-Visa stays of up to ninety days are not normally extendable inside Vietnam. If you want to stay longer, the practical route is to leave the country (a border run to Cambodia or Laos works) and apply for a new e-Visa — there’s no cooling-off period for e-Visas, only for visa-exempt entries.

Overstays are taken seriously and processed only at departure. The fine scale rises with the length of overstay (small fixed fee for one or two days, scaling to several hundred dollars for weeks) and a deportation stamp can bar re-entry for years. If you realise on day eighty-eight that you’re going to miss your visa expiry, fly out and re-enter on a fresh e-Visa rather than overstay.

Where to Apply & Official Sources

Watch out for impostor sites. A search for “Vietnam e-visa” surfaces dozens of paid lookalikes — vietnam-evisa.org, evisa-vietnam.com, and so on. Some are legitimate agency middlemen; some are scams. The only government site is the one above on the thithucdientu.gov.vn domain. If you’re paying more than USD 25 for a single-entry visa, you’re paying a markup.

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