Vietnam Visa Exemption 2026: Eligible Passports and Entry Conditions

Twenty-four nationalities enter Vietnam without a visa and stay 45 days. Two government resolutions set that, and they do not carry the same terms. One covers any purpose of travel. The other covers tourism only. That distinction decides whether a client flying in for meetings is compliant or not.

What follows is written for partners building client trips across our two core destinations. It is guidance, not legal or immigration advice. Confirm the current rule for each traveller's nationality on the official sources linked below before booking flights or applying for anything. The Vietnamese position here rests on the two resolutions and the government portals linked below. The Thai exemption dates were re-checked against the Royal Gazette on 1 September 2026, and the Thai treaty figures against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs bilateral list dated 12 December 2025.

Who gets 45 days, and under which rule

Vietnam widened its visa-free list in two steps, and the two steps are not equivalent.

Resolution 44/NQ-CP, signed 7 March 2025, runs from 15 March 2025 to the end of 14 March 2028. It covers Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Its own wording grants 45 days of temporary stay from the date of entry, and it says the exemption applies without distinction as to passport type or purpose of entry, provided the traveller meets Vietnam's general entry conditions. Leisure, business, MICE and family visits are all covered.

Resolution 229/NQ-CP, dated 8 August 2025, runs from 15 August 2025 to the end of 14 August 2028. It adds Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. It is a tourism stimulus measure, and it covers tourism only.

So a French client flying in for a site inspection is covered by the exemption. A Dutch or Polish client on the identical trip is not. Same 45 days, different conditions attached. That is not a technicality. It is the difference between a client who clears immigration and a client who should have held an e-visa.

Both resolutions state a hard end date, and neither renews automatically. They differ there too. Resolution 44 adds that extension will be considered under Vietnamese law. Resolution 229 states only its end date and ties the exemption to the tourism stimulus programme. Treat the table as the shape of the policy, not as a booking reference, and verify each traveller's nationality before you quote.

Who is not on either list

Every EU member state missing from both lists, meaning Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus, needs an e-visa, and so does Iceland.

The gap is not only European. The United States is on neither resolution, and neither is any Arab state, including all six Gulf Cooperation Council members: the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. Those clients travel on the e-visa. A partner selling into Vietnam from the Gulf or from North America is quoting the e-visa, not the exemption.

Iceland is worth calling out on its own. It is Nordic, its neighbours Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland are all covered, and it is not. Austria and Ireland sit in the same trap: surrounded by covered markets, not covered themselves. A partner who reads "most of Europe" and assumes an Irish client is fine has made an expensive assumption.

The conditions that apply to both lists

Five operational points, none of which appear on the resolution summaries most people read.

A passport with at least six months of validity is a written requirement, not a rule of thumb. Vietnam's immigration law sets it as a condition of entry for travellers arriving under unilateral visa exemption, which is exactly what both these resolutions are.

There is no longer a waiting period between visa-free entries. An older rule required travellers to wait 30 days after leaving Vietnam before re-entering visa-free. It was repealed in 2019 and stopped applying on 1 July 2020. Plenty of secondary sources still repeat it. For a partner building a multi-country loop that returns to Vietnam mid-trip, this is the difference between a workable routing and a rewrite.

Visa-exempt travellers are not restricted to the e-visa gate list. That list binds e-visa holders. Travellers entering under either resolution may use any operating international gate.

Vietnam wants at least two blank passport pages. Thailand asks for one, and that asymmetry is easy to miss on a combined trip, where an airline enforces it at check-in just as immigration does at the border.

A pre-arrival declaration is being piloted, and it is not compulsory. The Immigration Department has run a Pre-Arrival Information system since 15 April 2026, which began as a trial at Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat airport and has since expanded to Phu Quoc, Noi Bai in Hanoi, Da Nang and Cam Ranh. The Ministry of Public Security describes it in its own words as a pilot that is not yet mandatory. Travellers submit it online in the three days before entry, one declaration per person, and the stated benefit is a shorter queue at immigration. No penalty attaches to skipping it. It costs nothing, so put it on the pre-departure checklist anyway, and do not present it to clients as a requirement.

The 90-day e-visa for everyone else

No traveller is shut out. Vietnam's e-visa is currently open to citizens of all countries and territories, a scope the government designated in 2023 and can revise.

It is valid for up to 90 days, available as single or multiple entry, and applied for online. The fee is US$25 for single entry and US$50 for multiple entry, charged per visa and per applicant, set by Ministry of Finance Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC, in force since 1 April 2026. It is not refundable if the application is refused. The official maximum processing time is three working days, counted from the point the Immigration Department holds a complete application and the fee is paid.

Two things to build into your process. The e-visa is issued only to people who are outside Vietnam, so it cannot be obtained by a client who has already entered visa-free and wants to extend. And e-visa holders must enter through one of the designated international gates. At our last check there were 83, covering 17 airports, 27 land border crossings and 39 seaports. That is not every crossing on the map, and Vietnam keeps adding checkpoints, so confirm the current list on the portal before you ticket.

The e-visa is not the only alternative to the 45-day list. Vietnam holds separate exemption arrangements with a number of other countries, including its ASEAN neighbours, on their own day-counts and their own conditions. A client from one of those markets may not need to buy anything. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes the register, and it is the right place to check before you sell a visa nobody needs.

What 45 days actually buys

A visa allowance is a product boundary, not just a compliance number. Forty-five days is enough to travel Vietnam properly, from the northern highlands and Ha Long down through the central heritage towns to the Mekong Delta. It is enough to stop compressing the country into a ten-day skim.

It also changes how a Southeast Asia trip is assembled. Thailand's former 60-day exemption ended on 15 September 2026. The replacement covers tourism stays of up to 30 days for passports from 60 countries and territories; other nationalities must check their applicable 15-day exemption, bilateral, visa-on-arrival or visa route. The Ministry of Interior announcement was published in the Royal Gazette on 31 August 2026. Travellers admitted before the change retain the stay shown by their entry stamp. This Thailand comparison was checked on 28 September 2026 against the Tourism Authority of Thailand's current guidance. Two nationalities on the Vietnamese lists hold Thailand by bilateral treaty, which the reform did not change: South Korea at 90 days and Russia at 30 days, subject to their treaty conditions. Before the change, a Russian passport also held the former 60-day exemption; that scheme has ended.

Plan for both countries. A 30-day Thailand leg followed by a 45-day Vietnam leg fits only when each traveller's passport and purpose qualify for those separate allowances. What used to be sold as a Thailand-anchored trip with a short Vietnam add-on can now be built the other way around, with Vietnam carrying the longer half. The requirement is a ground partner who operates both countries and can move a client across the border without you validating a new supplier. That is what a two-country routing or a dedicated Vietnam programme is built to do. For help sizing the two legs, our guide to how many days to spend across Thailand and Vietnam sits alongside this one.

What to do before the next quote goes out

Check your client nationalities against both lists, and note which resolution each falls under. A market you treated as needing an e-visa may now be visa-free, which removes a step and a cost from the sell. Where a client on the Resolution 229 list is travelling for anything other than tourism, quote the e-visa. Where a client wants more than 45 days, quote the e-visa too, and make sure it is applied for before departure. Then confirm each traveller on the official portal, because final responsibility for eligibility rests with the authorities. For the wider picture on both countries, our note on Thailand and Vietnam entry requirements keeps them in one view, and our note on Thailand's move to a 30-day exemption covers the other half of the change. What each country asks for at the border itself is set out in our note on entry rules for both countries.

Preparing a Vietnam programme for clients? Our service for travel agencies explains how to brief the ground arrangements. Confirm each traveller's entry eligibility separately with the official sources above.