Visa information

Vietnam's route in the 2026 guide is short-stay led: an e-visa for 90 days, multiple entry, with long stays relying on renewals, plus a work permit and temporary residence card via an employer for those with a job. There is no dedicated nomad or retirement visa yet. The country scores 68/100 for visa and bureaucracy — workable, the guide implies, as long as you plan around the 90-day rhythm.

The routes the guide names

E-visa for 90 days, multiple entry — the guide's lead route, repeated in its schemes list as the “90-day multiple-entry e-visa for all nationalities.”

Work permit plus temporary residence card via employer — the employment route; the schemes list also names Investor and Temporary Residence cards without amounts or terms.

And the limit, stated in the visa list itself: “No dedicated nomad or retirement visa yet; long stays rely on renewals.”

Thresholds — what the sources do not quantify

The guide prints no income threshold, salary floor or investment amount for the e-visa, the work-permit route, or the Investor and Temporary Residence cards it names. It does not state how long a temporary residence card lasts or who qualifies for one, so this page invents none of those figures.

For remote workers the guide's position is tolerance, not a right: “No nomad visa; 90-day e-visa renewals widely used, remote work tolerated.” Plan on that basis — a renewal pattern the guide describes as widely used, not a nomad status it grants.

What the paperwork costs — plan budgets, not government fees

The guide does not list individual government visa fees separately. What it gives is a bundled “Visa, permits & translations” budget line in each move plan — described as government fees, apostilles and translations, with the Luxury tier adding an immigration lawyer — and those lines are the only sourced cost figures for the application itself:

• $600 — Affordable plan (you file yourself)
• $900 — Mid-range and Retirement plans
• $2,150 — Luxury plan (the plan notes the luxury tier adds an immigration lawyer)

The Retirement plan carries one further, separate line: $1,650 for “Retirement visa, lawyer & pension certification”, covering an immigration lawyer, apostilled pension letters, medicals and translations. Read the label carefully: the guide's own country text says no retirement visa exists yet, so this is the shared plan template's lawyer-and-certification budget, not evidence of a retirement route.

Application steps and timelines, by tier

The guide builds the application into each plan's timeline rather than printing a single step list. The common sequence across the plans and checklists is:

• Choose the route first and print its requirements; the Affordable checklist starts with “Visa route chosen and requirements printed.”
• Gather and legalise documents — apostilles and translations are named in every tier; the Retirement paperwork stage adds pension or income letters certified and apostilled, a police certificate, a medical, and birth and marriage certificates translated.
• Check your passport — the Affordable checklist requires a passport valid 18+ months.
• Arrange health insurance before you file (see the Hospitals page for the guide's first-year insurance budgets).
• File — yourself on the Affordable tier, or with a lawyer or agent on the Mid-range, Luxury and Retirement tiers.

Paperwork-stage durations in the guide: ~10 weeks filing yourself (Affordable), ~8 weeks with a lawyer or agent filing (Mid-range), ~6 weeks with a lawyer filing everything (Luxury), and ~14 weeks for the Retirement paperwork stage. After the move, the settle stage includes registering your address and opening a bank account.

Renewals and the path to residency — the honest limit of the guide

The guide's only long-stay mechanism in its own words is renewal: long stays rely on renewals of the 90-day e-visa, and for workers the temporary residence card comes via an employer. Neither the guide nor the site data gives renewal counts, a maximum total stay, residence-card durations, or a path or timetable to permanent residency, so this page states none. Treat the 90-day rhythm as the confirmed structure and every longer timetable as a question for an immigration lawyer or the official sources below.

Frequently asked questions