In 2026 Southeast Asia has become a competition of landing pages.
Thailand's DTV has a website, a fee structure, a five-year validity, and a press release that has been translated into fourteen languages. Indonesia's E33G has income requirements and a formal application portal. Malaysia's DE Rantau has a government agency behind it and a brand identity. The Philippines has added its name to the list.
Vietnam has no dedicated digital nomad visa or remote work visa.
Vietnam is also home to one of the largest and most established digital nomad communities in Southeast Asia. Da Nang, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City — all of them have coworking spaces, nomad cafés, established expat communities, affordable housing, and reliable internet infrastructure that has been improving steadily for years.
The absence of a formal programme has not prevented Vietnam from becoming exactly what the countries with formal programmes are trying to become. This is worth examining.
What People Actually Do
Most digital nomads in Vietnam use a 90-day multiple-entry e-visa, available online for $50. When the visa expires they fly to a neighbouring country — Bangkok, Siem Reap, Kuala Lumpur, Bali — for a weekend, then re-enter on a fresh e-visa. The quarterly visa run costs $200 to $400 per trip.
This is the system. It is not elegant. It involves planning around a quarterly calendar reminder that interrupts your work, costs real money, and requires you to leave a place you are living in to satisfy an administrative requirement that exists because the category you are living as does not officially exist yet.
It also works. It has been working for years. It will continue working until Vietnam decides to formalise the arrangement or decides to stop tolerating it, and there is currently no sign of either happening urgently.
Working remotely on an e-visa exists in a legal grey area — not explicitly authorised but not enforced, with the government appearing to tolerate the practice.
Tolerated but not authorised. This is the honest description of how most digital nomads in most Southeast Asian countries have been operating for most of the past decade. Vietnam is simply the country that has not yet replaced the grey area with a formal framework.
The Golden Visa That Isn't
In April 2025, Vietnam's Tourism Advisory Board proposed that the Prime Minister consider introducing a Golden Visa — a long-term residency programme that would allow eligible foreigners to reside in Vietnam for up to 10 years.
The proposal is in the proposal stage. The details are unclear. The timeline is unspecified. The income requirements, work rights, and application process are all subject to change pending official government decisions that have not yet been made.
The 5-year Talent Visa has been officially launched as the first concrete outcome of the broader Golden Visa discussions — but not all the details are clear yet, especially in terms of whether there will be a minimum income requirement or if you can work for Vietnamese clients.
Vietnam is watching what Thailand and Indonesia built and deciding what it wants from the relationship. This is sensible. The countries that moved fastest on digital nomad visas are also the ones discovering the complications — the tax residency questions, the monitoring infrastructure, the embassy inconsistencies, the gap between the written requirements and the on-the-ground standards.
Vietnam has the advantage of being second. It can learn from the first movers before committing to a framework.
Why Vietnam Works Without The Visa
The things that make a place good for remote work are not the things that appear on visa programme landing pages.
They are the actual internet speed in the actual cafés where people actually work. They are the cost of a decent apartment within walking distance of the places you want to be. They are the quality of the street food at 11pm when you have been working since 9am. They are the culture of the cities — whether they feel alive and interesting after six weeks, or whether the novelty has worn off and left you somewhere that does not quite feel like yours.
Vietnam's edge is the cheapest of the three main nomad cities for comparable quality, best food by a wide margin, fastest-improving infrastructure, and a feeling of being somewhere genuinely different and exciting — not just another nomad bubble.
Da Nang specifically has developed into something the visa programmes are trying to manufacture artificially. A real community of long-term residents, established local relationships, a city that knows the nomad population is there and has adapted to it organically rather than through government initiative.
Da Nang is the top recommendation for first-time nomads — manageable size, beach lifestyle, established nomad community in the An Thuong neighbourhood, excellent coworking infrastructure.
None of this required a press release.
The Honest Comparison
Thailand's DTV is genuinely excellent for the person it is designed for — the established remote worker with $16,000 in savings, a clean employment history, and the patience for an embassy application process that varies by location and has been tightening its standards since launch.
Vietnam's e-visa system is genuinely workable for everyone else — the person who is still building the savings, the freelancer whose income is irregular, the person who arrived three months ago and is still figuring it out, the person who simply does not want to deal with a formal visa application and is comfortable with the quarterly reminder.
Both are legitimate choices. They serve different profiles. The framing of Vietnam as the country that has not caught up to Thailand misses what Vietnam is actually offering — a system that works informally, at low cost, with minimal administrative friction, for a wide range of people who do not fit the profile the formal programmes are optimising for.
The visa run is annoying. The visa run is also cheap, has a budget flight and a weekend in Bangkok built into it, and costs less in total than the DTV application fee.
What Will Change
Vietnam will formalise eventually. The economic argument is clear and the regional pressure is real. When every neighbour has a formal programme and Vietnam is still operating on polite tolerance, the gap becomes increasingly difficult to justify to investors and to the international community that the programmes are designed to impress.
When it happens the terms will reflect what Vietnam has learned. The income threshold that works for Hanoi will be different from the threshold that works for Canggu. The framework that serves a city like Da Nang, where nomads have been integrating into local economic life for years, will look different from the framework for a beach destination managing overtourism.
Vietnam has the opportunity to build something better than what its neighbours built because it can see what its neighbours built and what the complications are.
For now the e-visa works. The quarterly run to Bangkok is annoying and expensive and also perfectly fine as a system for most people who are here.
Vietnam does not have a digital nomad visa. Vietnam does not need your $50 application fee and a government landing page to be one of the best places to work from in Southeast Asia.
This is fine.
Andrew — No Refunds •••