Do Canadians Need a Visa for Vietnam?

Do Canadians need a visa for Vietnam?

Yes. Canadian passport holders need a visa to enter Vietnam, and Canada is not on any Vietnamese visa exemption list for ordinary tourists. The practical route for a holiday is the e-visa, which is issued online for up to 90 days and can be single or multiple entry.

The e-visa is not a blanket permission. It is tied to the port of entry named in the application, it is issued only to holders of a regular passport, and it cannot be corrected after submission. Those three constraints produce almost every refusal, denied boarding, and wasted fee that Canadians run into.

Canada is not on Vietnam's visa exemption list

Vietnam grants visa-free access to a defined group of countries, mostly in ASEAN and a small number of bilateral partners. Canada is not among them. Canada's advisory is direct: Canadian passport holders must have a visa to enter Vietnam, and a tourist visa is required.

Two groups sit outside the ordinary route. Canadians of Vietnamese origin may qualify for a visa exemption certificate if they are the spouse or child of a Vietnamese citizen, which is arranged through the Embassy of Vietnam in Canada rather than online. Canadians travelling on a temporary passport or an emergency travel document cannot use the e-visa at all and must apply at an embassy.

There is no walk-up visa counter at the airport for tourists. Agencies still sell 'visa on arrival' approval letters, but the document that matters is the one issued through Vietnam's own portal, and an agency letter is not a visa. Anyone charging a fee for an approval letter is selling a step that the e-visa replaced.

The 90-day e-visa: single or multiple entry

The e-visa is available as a single-entry or multiple-entry document, valid for up to 90 days. A single-entry e-visa is spent the moment you leave Vietnam, even if weeks remain on its validity. A multiple-entry e-visa lets you leave and return within the validity period, which is what you want for a route that includes Cambodia, Laos, or a side trip home.

The 90 days is the maximum validity, not a guarantee of 90 days of sightseeing. The officer at the checkpoint stamps an entry date, and you must leave on or before the expiry date printed on the e-visa. An e-visa that expires while you are still in the country is an overstay even if you entered only a week before it lapsed.

The only portal that issues a valid e-visa

Vietnam's e-visas are issued through the national electronic visa system. The Immigration Department moved the service to two official domains in November 2024: evisa.gov.vn and thithucdientu.gov.vn. The older portal at evisa.xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn now carries a notice redirecting applicants to those addresses.

1. Confirm the domain ends in .gov.vn. The official portal is evisa.gov.vn; everything else is a reseller.
2. Create the application with the exact name order, date of birth, and passport number printed in your passport.
3. Select the port of entry you will actually use, and check the list of accepted ports before you choose.
4. Upload the passport data page photo and the portrait photo to the specification shown on the form.
5. Pay the fee by card on the portal and keep the receipt. The fee is not refunded if the visa is refused.
6. Download the granted e-visa and print at least two copies, one for your bag and one for your passport.

Processing takes days rather than hours. Apply at least a week before departure if your dates are fixed, and allow longer in peak season, checking the processing time stated on the portal at the moment you apply.

How look-alike sites take your money

Search for 'Vietnam e-visa' and the paid results are almost never the government portal. They copy the form, add a service fee of anywhere from a few dollars to more than a hundred, and sometimes issue a document that is not a valid e-visa at all. The applicant discovers the problem at check-in, when the airline cannot find an approval against the passport number.

Three signals separate the real portal from a reseller. The real one has a .gov.vn domain. It charges the government fee only, with no 'urgent processing' upsell. And it shows the official list of accepted ports of entry, because the port is a field in the application rather than something an agent chooses for you.

If you have already paid a reseller and received a PDF, check it against the passport: the e-visa carries a registration code that can be looked up on the official portal. If the code does not resolve, you do not have a visa.

Your e-visa is tied to one port of entry

An e-visa authorises entry only at the port named in the application. Canada's advisory states this in plain terms: the e-visa allows you to enter Vietnam via the port of entry indicated in the visa approval notice only. Arriving at a different airport is treated as arriving without a visa, and the airline may refuse boarding before you get that far.

This is the most expensive mistake in the process because the fix is a new application and a new fee, not an amendment. The application cannot be edited once submitted. A traveller who applies for Ho Chi Minh City and then books a cheaper flight into Hanoi has no visa for Hanoi.

Land crossings count too. If you plan to enter overland from Cambodia at Moc Bai or from China at Huu Nghi, the land border gate must be the port on your e-visa. The official portal publishes the full list of land, air, and sea border gates that accept e-visas, and it is worth reading before you book anything.

Passport rules: six months, and no emergency passports

Vietnam requires a passport valid for at least six months beyond the date you expect to leave the country. That is the rule Canada's advisory publishes, and the Vietnamese e-visa conditions state the same thing: the passport must be valid for more than six months. A passport with four months left will not support an e-visa even if the trip is two weeks long.

A Vietnamese visa inside an expired Canadian passport is not valid, and the visa has to be transferred to the new passport. If you renewed after your visa was issued, deal with the transfer before you fly rather than at the airport. Our blank pages guide covers how much space to leave, and the six-month validity rule explains why airlines enforce this more strictly than border officers.

The fields that get applications refused

The e-visa form is short and unforgiving. There is no correction step: the application cannot be edited after submission, and the fee is not refunded if the visa is refused. Most refusals trace back to a mismatch between the form and the passport.

1. Copy your full name in the order printed in the passport, including middle names, and do not reorder it for Western convention.
2. Enter the passport number exactly, with no spaces and no confusion between the letter O and the digit zero.
3. Match the date of birth format to the form rather than to your own habit; day and month are easy to swap.
4. Use the passport expiry date, not the issue date, and make sure it is at least six months after your departure.
5. Check the port of entry against your actual flight or land crossing, not the city you plan to visit first.
6. Upload a portrait photo that meets the specification, since a rejected photo stalls the application without refunding it.

After approval, check the e-visa against the passport before you travel. A typo that survived the process is still a mismatch at the counter, and the officer is not required to fix it. Canada's advisory warns that errors can cause denied boarding, additional fees on arrival, or refused entry.

Ports of entry that accept e-visas

The e-visa portal publishes the border gates that accept e-visas, divided into land, air, and sea. The list is long, but it is not every crossing, and a small regional airport or a minor land gate may not appear. Check your exact arrival point against the official list before you apply.

Airports are the simplest choice for a first trip because the airline can verify the e-visa against the flight number. Land crossings add a second check at the border, and a mismatch between the gate on your e-visa and the gate you present at is not something the officer can resolve on the spot.

After approval: what to print and what to carry

A granted e-visa arrives as a PDF. Print it, keep a copy on your phone, and carry the passport it was issued against. The airline will ask for it at check-in, because the carrier is liable for transporting a passenger who is not admissible.

If you fly into Tan Son Nhat Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, the Vietnamese government encourages travellers to complete a Digital Pre-arrival Form online within three days of arrival. Canada's advisory notes that it is not mandatory at the time of writing, but that it could become mandatory or expand to other airports at short notice.

On arrival you must also be registered at your accommodation. Hotels normally file the declaration for you; if you stay with friends or in a private rental, confirm that the host has notified the local police, because the obligation sits with the host and the guest rather than with the booking platform.

Phu Quoc and the island-only exemption

Vietnam has a separate entry arrangement for Phu Quoc, the island off the southern coast, that has historically allowed visitors to stay without a visa when they arrive directly and remain on the island. It is a genuine policy, and it is also the most over-sold fact in Vietnamese visa content.

The exemption is not described on the e-visa portal or in Canada's advisory for Vietnam, and both sources describe a visa requirement without an island carve-out. Treat the island exemption as unconfirmed for 2026: ask the Embassy of Vietnam in Canada, in writing, whether it still applies to Canadian passport holders, and get the answer before you book a Phu Quoc-only itinerary without an e-visa.

The practical risk is the onward leg. An island exemption does not give you permission to fly or sail to the mainland, so a traveller who lands on Phu Quoc without an e-visa and then decides to visit Ho Chi Minh City has no lawful route to do it. If your trip includes the mainland, apply for the e-visa and treat the island as one stop on it.

Staying longer than 90 days

Ninety days is the ceiling for an e-visa. Canada's advisory states that for visits longer than 90 days you must get a visa from the nearest Vietnamese embassy before departure. That applies to anyone planning a long stay, a work placement, or a study term, and it applies even if the plan is to leave and re-enter on a multiple-entry e-visa.

A multiple-entry e-visa is useful for a regional loop inside its validity, not for extending time. Leaving and re-entering does not add days; the visa still expires on the date printed on it. A new e-visa requires a new application, a new fee, and a new port selection.

If you are already in Vietnam and need more time, the honest options are to leave before expiry and apply again from outside, or to hold the correct visa from the start. Attempting to convert a tourist e-visa into a longer status inside the country is not a reliable plan, and overstaying while you try is treated as an immigration violation rather than an administrative delay.

Overstays, fines and exit checks

Overstaying a Vietnamese visa, or holding the wrong type of visa, is treated seriously. Canada's advisory warns that authorities may delay onward travel until a fine is paid, and that you may not be allowed to check into or book accommodation without a valid visa. Hotels check, and a lapsed visa can leave you without a room as well as without a flight.

The exit check is where the problem surfaces. Immigration officers compare the entry stamp, the visa expiry, and the passport, and a discrepancy is resolved before you reach the gate. Build a buffer of a day or two before an international connection if your visa expires close to your departure date.

The cheapest fix is always the same: apply for the right visa, with the right port, before you travel, and leave on or before the date printed on it. Our visa-free country list shows where Canada sits regionally, and the China page covers a consular visa process that is different again.

Application checklist

Work through this list before you pay the fee. The first step is to fix the port of entry, because every other field on the form is checked against it. Each item maps to a refusal reason that cannot be fixed after submission.

1. Passport valid for at least six months beyond your planned departure, and a regular rather than emergency passport.
2. Name, date of birth, and passport number copied character for character from the data page.
3. Port of entry chosen from the official list, matching the flight or land gate you have actually booked.
4. Portrait photo and passport data page image that meet the portal's specification.
5. Card ready for the fee, with the understanding that it is not refunded if the application is refused.
6. Printed e-visa and a phone copy, plus a note of the registration code for verification.
7. Accommodation address in Vietnam for the arrival declaration, and a host who will register you if it is not a hotel.

For the regional picture, including countries where Canadians do not need any advance permission, see the visa-free countries list. If your route continues to Thailand, check the 30-day exemption there before you book the onward leg: Thailand visa rules for Canadians.

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