How to Get a Vietnam Visa Online in 2026 (And What Happens If They Ask for More)

I wrote a guide to the Vietnam e-visa back in 2024, and I thought that was the end of it. Apply, pay, wait three days, done. Then my wife and I applied again this year for a trip to Hanoi, and the two applications went in on the same day, for the same trip, with the same documents. Mine came back approved in three days. Hers came back asking for more.

That is the part nobody warns you about. The Vietnam e-visa is not one fixed process. It is case by case. Two people in the same household can get two completely different experiences.

So this post is the 2024 guide plus the thing I learned the hard way. If you want the full click-by-click of the form, that is still in my 2024 Vietnam visa guide. This one is about what changed, what the form asks for now, and exactly what to do if immigration comes back asking for more.

The official portal is here: https://evisa.gov.vn/e-visa/foreigners

What the form asks for in 2026

The form does not ask you to upload a flight ticket. It does not ask you to upload a hotel booking either. You would think that means you do not need them yet.

You do. Here is why.

They ask for your address in Vietnam. The full address of where you are staying. Not a city, the actual hotel address. So you need the booking in front of you to fill this in correctly.

They ask for your intended border gate of entry. The exact airport or crossing you will arrive through. You get this from your flight ticket.

They ask for your intended border gate of exit. The one you will leave through. Again, from your ticket.

So even though there is no upload box for the ticket or the booking, the form is quietly built around both. My advice: book the flight and the hotel first, then apply. That is how I did it. And it turned out to matter even more than I expected, for a reason I will get to.

What it cost

The single-entry e-visa fee is USD 25. When I paid, the total came to 672,006 VND, made up of the visa fee of 646,875 VND and a small payment service fee of 25,131 VND. So budget a little over the 25 dollars for the gateway charge.

You pay online by card at the end of the form. I paid with a Visa card through the VNPAY gateway and it went through cleanly. If you want a better exchange rate on the conversion, I still use Wise for this kind of payment — you can hold VND in the wallet and pay in the local currency. Here is my referral link if you want to try it: https://wise.com/invite/ihpc/husnym2

My application: approved in three days

Nothing dramatic here. I filled in the form, entered my hotel address and my two border gates, paid, and got the approval email in three working days. This is the normal path, and it is probably what will happen to you.

But keep reading, because the other path is the one worth preparing for.

My wife’s application: they asked for more

Same trip. Same day. Same hotel, same flights. Her application came back with a request for additional information, and the reasons were these three:

Provide the name of the agency, organization, or individual you plan to contact when you enter Vietnam, as a written agreement. We had no agency. It is a private holiday. Nobody is hosting us.

Provide a return ticket. They wanted proof we were leaving.

Provide a more detailed travel itinerary for the stay in Vietnam. A day-by-day plan, not just an address.

This is exactly why I told you to have the flight and hotel booked before you apply. Because we already had the return ticket, we could answer within the hour instead of scrambling to buy flights under pressure. We sent three things back: the return air ticket, a detailed day-by-day itinerary, and a short signed personal statement explaining that there was no agency because it is simply a personal trip.

Three working days after we submitted those, her visa was approved too.

The templates you can use

The two documents that did the work here were the itinerary and the personal statement. The return ticket you already get from your airline, so there is nothing to template there. But the other two I had to write from scratch under a bit of stress, so I have cleaned them up into templates you can just fill in.

I have hidden all our personal details and dates. Everything in brackets is yours to replace.

The personal statement is the one that answers the “agency or organization” question when the honest answer is that there is none. It states plainly that this is a private, self-funded leisure trip, that no agency or sponsor is involved, and that your point of contact on the ground is your booked hotel. That framing is what satisfied them.

Download the personal statement template (PDF)

The detailed itinerary is a simple day-by-day table. Date, the main sights for that day, and a short line on the plan. It does not need to be a fancy tour plan. It just has to show a real person has thought through a real trip.

Download the travel itinerary template (PDF)

One thing to keep consistent across everything: the hotel name and address in your itinerary and your statement should match the address you typed into the e-visa form, and match your actual hotel booking. Immigration is checking that your story holds together.

Why this is so unpredictable

I have since heard every version of this. Some people get approved in five days with no questions at all. Some get one request for more information, answer it, and get approved like my wife did. And some get asked again and again, for details that are not always clear, and it drags on.

There is no published rule for who gets asked what. It genuinely depends on the officer and the case. You cannot control that.

What you can control is being ready. If your flight and hotel are booked before you apply, then an information request is a small annoyance, not a crisis. You answer it in an hour with documents you already have and a statement you have already written. If you apply with nothing booked, hoping to sort it out after the visa comes, one of these requests can leave you stuck.

So book first. Keep the ticket and the booking handy. Have the itinerary and the statement ready to go. Then apply. If you sail through in three days, you lost nothing. If they come back asking, you will be glad you did.

Enjoy Hanoi. 🛫