Vietnam Visa

Vietnam runs one of the most open entry systems in the region — a ninety-day electronic visa available to every nationality — and no retirement route at all.

Last updated: August 2026.

Vietnam used to be the country in the region where you genuinely had to deal with a consulate — long forms, agency middlemen, approval letters arranged by a hotel. That ended in August 2023, when the electronic visa was opened to citizens of every country and territory and its maximum stay was raised to ninety days. The direction of travel since has been steadily looser: two rounds of European visa waivers during 2025, and a doubling of the border checkpoints that accept an e-visa in December 2025.

What has not appeared is a retirement route. Vietnamese immigration law lists visas by symbol, and none of the symbols is a retirement category — so the long-stay section below describes what people actually use instead, and the limits of each, rather than a scheme that exists.

Tourist Entry

There are three ways a visitor gets in. Most people need only the middle row.

Route Who it covers Maximum stay Cost
Visa exemption Nationals of the countries named in the current government resolutions, plus a number of ASEAN and other bilateral partners 45 days for the current European, Japanese, Korean and Russian lists; other agreements are shorter Free
e-Visa Citizens of all countries and territories 90 days, single or multiple entry USD 25 single entry, USD 50 multiple
Phu Quoc direct arrival All nationalities arriving at the island directly from outside Vietnam 30 days, the island only Free

The e-Visa

The e-visa is the route most visitors use. It is open to citizens of all countries and territories, for a maximum of ninety days with single or multiple entries, and you apply, pay and download it yourself. Two government domains run the same system and both are official: evisa.gov.vn and thithucdientu.gov.vn. Anything else is a reseller.

Where the e-visa is accepted. The list of checkpoints roughly doubled at the end of 2025: Resolution 389/NQ-CP of 2 December 2025 added forty-one border gates, taking the total to 83 across international airports, land crossings and seaports. That covers every airport a visitor is likely to use and a much wider set of land borders than before. Published breakdowns of the 83 differ slightly between sources, so if your plan depends on a specific land crossing, check the current list on the official portal before you book.

Nominate the port you will actually use. Sources disagree on whether a 2026-issued e-visa still binds you to the checkpoint you named — some reporting says the field no longer appears on the issued document, while professional advisories still state that the port cannot be changed once the visa is issued. Since naming the right one costs nothing, name the right one.

Visa exemption

Vietnam’s waivers are granted by time-limited government resolutions rather than being permanent, and there are currently two separate forty-five-day schemes that are easy to confuse:

Both have expiry dates and both need a further resolution to continue. Separately, ASEAN neighbours and a handful of other countries hold their own bilateral or unilateral exemptions, with stays that vary by agreement and have been adjusted more than once recently — the published day counts for those disagree between sources, so check yours against the Immigration Department rather than a travel article. Vietnam’s embassy in Japan also lists Belarus among the forty-five-day exemptions.

Two practical points. The thirty-day cooling-off period that used to sit between two visa-exempt entries was removed when the law was amended with effect from July 2020, so in principle you can leave and return immediately — though repeated same-day crossings will attract questions, and if a trip genuinely depends on an immediate re-entry it is worth confirming with the Immigration Department first. And an exemption is not always the better deal: if you want more than forty-five days, or you want to come and go, buy the ninety-day e-visa even though you could enter free.

Phu Quoc

Phu Quoc has its own waiver, and it is unusual in applying to every nationality: thirty days, free, no application, provided you arrive at the island directly from outside Vietnam by air or sea. It covers the island only. If you intend to carry on to the mainland you need an e-visa or an ordinary exemption, so check the routing before you rely on it.

Extending, and what to do instead

There is no dependable way to extend an e-visa from inside Vietnam. The reason is structural rather than arbitrary: under Article 35 of the Law on Entry, Exit, Transit and Residence of Foreigners an extension of temporary residence is requested by the inviting or guaranteeing party, and an e-visa has no such sponsor. Agencies advertise extensions and the reported outcomes are inconsistent; do not build a trip around one.

The reliable move is to leave and come back on a fresh e-visa. There is no cooling-off period, so a short hop to a neighbouring country and a new ninety days is straightforward. Overstaying is not: the UK Foreign Office notes that the authorities can stop you leaving until a fine is paid, and that you can be deported and barred from returning. Fines are assessed at departure, so an overstay is discovered at the airport, on the day you are trying to fly.

Visa on arrival

The old visa-on-arrival scheme still exists but has been overtaken. It needs a sponsor-arranged approval letter, works only for air arrivals, and you still pay the same USD 25 or USD 50 stamping fee in cash at the counter — on top of whatever the agency charged for the letter. It saves nothing. Use it only if a sponsor tells you your specific case cannot go through the e-visa system.

Retirement & Long Stay

Vietnam does not have a retirement visa. There is no equivalent of Thailand’s O-A, Malaysia’s MM2H or the Philippines’ SRRV. Vietnamese law grants visas by symbol — among them DL for tourism, DN for business, DT for investors, DH for study, LD for employment, TT for family members and VR for visits — and the article of the law setting out those symbols and their validity periods contains no retirement category. Anyone offering you a “Vietnam retirement visa” is selling something else under that name.

That does not mean foreigners cannot live in Vietnam long-term. It means they do it through a category built for another purpose, and each has a real limitation worth understanding before you commit money.

Two recent developments get described as retirement options and are not. Vietnam introduced a special visa exemption card under Decree 221/2025/ND-CP, valid for multiple entries for up to five years, but it is aimed at defined categories such as investors, academics and honorary consuls rather than the general public. And new UD1 and UD2 categories were introduced from 1 July 2026 for high-technology and special-talent professionals, with UD2 covering a spouse and children under eighteen — again up to five years, again not a means-tested retirement scheme.

If you are weighing any of these seriously, start at the Immigration Department and take Vietnamese legal advice. The categories above were built for investors, workers and families, and a retiree fitting into one of them is fitting into someone else’s scheme — which is workable, but worth going into with clear eyes.

Student Visas

Study is a proper category. The symbol is DH, and under Article 9 of the Law on Entry, Exit, Transit and Residence of Foreigners a DH visa is valid for at most twelve months. Longer programmes are handled by renewing it or by moving onto a temporary residence card, which DH holders are eligible for.

The process is sponsor-led, and this is the part that catches people out. You do not apply for a student visa yourself the way you apply for an e-visa. Your institution files for a pre-approval with the Immigration Department, sends you the approval correspondence, and you then present it to a Vietnamese embassy or consulate to have the visa issued. RMIT Vietnam sets this out for its own intake and is explicit about the consequence: if you are already in Vietnam on a different type of visa and want a student visa, you are required to leave the country to obtain it. Do not fly in on an e-visa expecting to convert on the spot.

Before You Fly

References

These sources were checked in August 2026. Visa rules change by resolution and often at short notice, and several of the exemptions above carry fixed expiry dates. Confirm anything that affects your booking against the official portal, which is the authority — not this page.

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