Visa requirements for Vietnamese citizens

Vietnamese citizens need a Schengen visa, which covers all member states for up to 90 days in any 180-day period.

Of the 198 countries whose entry rules are known in both directions, Vietnam and 15 of them let each other’s citizens in without a visa obtained in advance (visa-free, on arrival or with an ETA; an e-visa counts as a visa).

24 countries ask holders of the Vietnamese passport for a visa beforehand, although their own citizens enter Vietnam without one: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark and 19 others.

The reverse holds for 37 countries: holders of the Vietnamese passport get in without a visa obtained in advance, but their citizens need one for Vietnam (Barbados, Burundi, Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti and 32 others).

93 countries ask holders of the Vietnamese passport for a visa obtained before travel from an embassy, a consulate or a visa centre. 42 of them have an embassy or consulate on record in Vietnam.

51 countries have no embassy or career consulate on record in Vietnam, so the application usually goes to one of their posts in another country. Counting the post an official diplomatic list names for Vietnam, or else the nearest one within 2,000 km, those posts are most often in Thailand (2).

The United States refused 22% of visitor-visa (B1/B2) applications from citizens of Vietnam in fiscal year 2025, by the State Department’s adjusted refusal rate. 76 of the 197 nationalities with a published rate had a lower one and 120 a higher one; the middle value was 32%.

Schengen consulates in Vietnam refused 9.4% of short-stay visa applications in 2025 (all Schengen consulates worldwide: 15%). Among the 74 countries where they received at least 10,000 applications, that is the 55th highest rate. The figure counts every nationality applying there, not only citizens.

Visa-free travel with the Vietnamese passport

By continent, the Vietnamese passport is visa-free in 14 countries in Asia, 6 countries in the Americas, 2 countries in Africa, 1 country in Europe and 1 country in Oceania. The longest visa-free stays for Vietnamese citizens are allowed in Barbados (90 days), Chile (90 days), Haiti (90 days), Panama (90 days), the Seychelles (90 days) and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (90 days).

Visa on arrival

Vietnamese citizens can get a visa at the airport or land border of Burundi, Cape Verde, the Comoros, Djibouti, Guinea-Bissau, Jordan, Madagascar and 17 others.

E-Visa and electronic travel authorisation

An e-Visa, applied for online before the trip, is how Vietnamese citizens enter Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, the Bahamas, Bahrain and 46 others. Ivory Coast, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Suriname and Taiwan ask instead for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), a lighter online check than a visa.

Vietnam’s neighbours

Laos and Cambodia admit Vietnamese citizens without a visa. For the other neighbours, the rules are: China (visa required).

How the passport compares

Among neighbouring passports, the Chinese passport ranks 113th (78 destinations), the Cambodian passport ranks 162nd (51 destinations) and the Lao passport ranks 176th (46 destinations). Of the 198 passports in the data, 39 can enter visa-free and 159 need an e-Visa for Vietnam.