A friend once told me he did not need a Vietnamese work permit.
“Why not?”
“I’m married to a Vietnamese citizen.”
Fair enough. Then came the more interesting question: had his employer done the paperwork required for the exemption?
Silence.
This is where work permits in Vietnam become slightly less simple than they first appear.
The basic rule is straightforward: foreign nationals working in Vietnam generally need a work permit unless they fall within a statutory exemption.
Since August 2025, the main rules are contained in Decree 219/2025/NĐ-CP. The exemption grounds include:
- Certain company owners and investors, including qualifying owners or capital-contributing members of limited liability companies and qualifying members of the boards of joint-stock companies.
- Intra-company transferees working for qualifying commercial presences in Vietnam, provided the regulatory conditions are met.
- Short-term managers, executive directors, experts and technical workers working in Vietnam for a total of less than 90 days in a calendar year.
- Foreigners married to Vietnamese citizens and residing in Vietnam.
- Foreign lawyers holding the appropriate Vietnamese practising licence.
- Heads of representative offices or projects, and persons principally responsible for certain international organisations or foreign NGOs in Vietnam.
- People entering Vietnam for less than three months to offer services.
- People entering for less than three months to deal with technical or technological problems that cannot be handled by available experts in Vietnam.
- People providing professional or technical services for qualifying ODA-funded programmes and projects.
- Foreign students and trainees working or interning under qualifying arrangements.
- Relatives of members of foreign diplomatic missions who are permitted to work under an applicable international treaty.
- Official-passport holders working for specified Vietnamese state or political bodies.
- People responsible for establishing a commercial presence in Vietnam.
- Qualifying unpaid volunteers working under international treaties.
- People entering Vietnam to implement certain international agreements.
- Certain foreign teachers, researchers and education managers whose work is confirmed by the Ministry of Education and Training.
- Foreign specialists in designated priority fields, including finance, science, technology, innovation and national digital transformation, where the required confirmation has been obtained.
The details matter. “Short assignment,” for example, does not mean any job that happens to be short. Intra-company transfer has its own conditions. Being an investor is not enough by itself: capital thresholds apply.
And exemption does not mean simply turning up for work without paperwork.
For many categories, the employer must obtain a work permit exemption certificate from the competent authority. For several specified exemptions, including foreigners married to Vietnamese citizens, the certificate procedure itself is waived, but the employer must still notify the competent authority at least three working days before work begins.
That is the part easily missed: “exempt from a work permit” does not mean “exempt from the administrative process.”
If it is unclear which category applies, or what filing is required, getting legal advice before the first working day is usually simpler than sorting it out afterwards.
