Vietnam announced a Golden Visa in May 2025 with 5- and 10-year residency tracks, online filing, and rumored thresholds of USD 250,000–400,000 for the investor route. One year later, you still can’t apply. No enabling law has been passed, no draft regulations published, no form on the immigration portal. If you’re planning a long Vietnam stay in 2026, you need to know what’s actually on the table today and what’s still on a press release.
The announcement vs the May 2026 reality
The May 2025 reveal was a clean win for headline writers — a Southeast Asian Golden Visa at a fraction of the U.S. EB-5 price, dual citizenship unlocked for the first time in 40 years, online application, and a family-friendly framework. Vietnamese state media tied it to Resolution №57 from December 2024, which prioritised science and tech as national strategy.
Twelve months on, the announcement is still an announcement. There is no application portal, no enabling decree on the books, no published form. Migration lawyers I trust pencil the realistic launch in at late 2026 to 2028. Anyone offering to “apply now” is either rewriting the May 2025 press release or pre-booking you for whenever the rules ship.
What the proposal actually offers
The draft as it stands today: a 5-year or 10-year residency permit, renewable, fully online. The target groups are foreign investors, qualified professionals, digital nomads with verifiable income, and people with Vietnamese family roots. Decree №16, the live mechanism behind the dual-citizenship reform, also relaxed the 5-year residency rule and dropped the language exam — which is the strongest signal yet that the Golden Visa, when it lands, will lean on the same flexibility.
Who would qualify if it launched
Four broad buckets emerged from the announcement: investors clearing the USD 250–400K bar; international IT and research talent with patents, publications or recognised roles; family members of qualifying applicants under the simplified family route; and ethnic Vietnamese (one parent or grandparent born in Vietnam) under the dual-citizenship lane.
If you fit none of those — most tourists, short-term remote workers, and freelancers under that cash threshold — the Golden Visa will not change your life in 2026 even when it launches.
If none of the Golden Visa boxes fit you, the useful question is which of the everyday routes actually does — and that depends on your budget and how long you plan to stay. This is the part I sort for people: matching the real long-stay mechanisms to your case instead of the headline scheme. Message me on Telegram with your situation and I’ll lay out the options that would genuinely work.
Live options for long-term Vietnam today
Until the Golden Visa actually opens, four mechanisms cover the same ground.
DT1–DT4 investor visas are the closest current equivalent and they are not a proposal — they are live. DT4 needs around USD 100,000 in registered Vietnamese business capital, DT1 sits at USD 5 million and up, with terms up to 10 years and family inclusion. If you have the capital and intend to actually run a Vietnam-registered company, DT today gives you roughly what the Golden Visa is promising for tomorrow.
The 90-day single-entry e-visa suits a single uninterrupted stay. Walk this through the Vietnam e-visa application for Russians . It dies the moment you cross the border, so it doesn’t fit nomads who hop around the region.
The 45-day visa-free + visa run cycle is the long-term traveler’s workhorse. Cheap, repeatable, and uses the renewing a Vietnam visa from inside the country extension when you want to skip the border trip. Plan around your cost of living in Vietnam and you can stretch a 2026 budget further than most expect.
Work Permit + LD visa is the route if a Vietnamese company hires you. Slower to set up but the most stable of the bunch.
Should you wait or use what works now
If you have the USD 250–400K and a real investment plan, your dilemma is small — start the DT4 paperwork now and switch to Golden once it opens, because the qualifying capital may carry over. If you’re a remote worker or freelancer hoping the Golden Visa will let you stay long-term cheap, the answer is harder: don’t wait. Build a working 2026 stack — e-visa, visa-free, visa run, maybe Work Permit — and revisit when the law actually drops.
For the in-Vietnam logistics around long stays — moving to Vietnam in 2026 or renting an apartment in Da Nang long-term — we’ve written the practical playbooks already.
Realistic timeline for an actual launch
Track two places, ignore the rest. The Vietnamese immigration portal evisa.gov.vn will host the first real application form when it lands. Official government press releases on the National Assembly and Ministry of Public Security sites will confirm the decree. Anything posted earlier by visa agencies is marketing — useful for context, not for planning.
Check quarterly. Nothing in migration policy moves faster than that, and a year of weekly refreshes will only burn you out.
Need help mapping your route? Reach us:
- Telegram: @vietnam_samurai and we’ll walk through your situation.
- Telegram: @vietnam_samurai — message us directly about visas, moving and residency.