Vietnam entry reference
Vietnam E-Visa Deadlines: Weekends and Holidays
Processing pauses on weekends and Vietnamese public holidays, not just the stated three days. The 2026-2027 dates, and how they move your deadline.
- Updated
- 15 August 2026
- Reading time
- 6 minutes
- Purpose
- Independent reference
What “three working days” leaves out
The standard e-visa processing time is three working days from submission and payment. Read “working days” literally, because the two words it excludes are doing more damage to a travel plan than most applicants expect.
Excluded: every Saturday and Sunday, and every Vietnamese public holiday. Not the holidays on a Western calendar - the ones set by the Vietnamese government, several of which move every year because they follow the lunar calendar. A submission that lands the day before a long break does not wait three days. It waits three days plus the length of the break, because the clock simply does not run while government offices are closed.
The portal itself does not close. Applications can still be submitted and paid for at any time, including on a public holiday - the queue just does not move again until the next working day.
Vietnamese public holidays, 2026 and 2027
Checked mid-August 2026 against the government’s published schedule. Three status levels appear in the table, and the difference between them matters:
- Confirmed - the full break is published by the government (2026, already decided).
- Calendar minimum - the statutory day is fixed, and it happens to sit next to a weekend, so the total break is certain even without a government decision on any extra bridge day.
- Anchor only - the statutory date is fixed, but the full multi-day break has not been announced yet. Tet and National Day are set by a separate government decision each year, usually published two to four months ahead, so the 2027 versions of those breaks are not out as of this check.
| Holiday | Start date | End date | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Year’s Day | 2026-01-01 | 2026-01-04 | Confirmed |
| Lunar New Year (Tet) | 2026-02-14 | 2026-02-22 | Confirmed |
| Hung Kings Commemoration Day | 2026-04-25 | 2026-04-27 | Confirmed |
| Reunification Day and Labour Day | 2026-04-30 | 2026-05-03 | Confirmed |
| National Day | 2026-08-29 | 2026-09-02 | Confirmed |
| Vietnam Culture Day | 2026-11-24 | 2026-11-24 | Confirmed |
| New Year’s Day | 2027-01-01 | 2027-01-03 | Calendar minimum |
| Lunar New Year (Tet) | 2027-02-06 | 2027-02-06 | Anchor only |
| Hung Kings Commemoration Day | 2027-04-16 | 2027-04-18 | Calendar minimum |
| Reunification Day and Labour Day | 2027-04-30 | 2027-05-02 | Calendar minimum |
| National Day | 2027-09-02 | 2027-09-02 | Anchor only |
| Vietnam Culture Day | 2027-11-24 | 2027-11-24 | Anchor only |
These dates are the government-office schedule, which is what governs immigration processing. Private businesses are sometimes given a shorter version of the same holiday - two days instead of five for National Day, for instance - but that shorter version does not apply to a government department.
The 2027 rows will firm up as each decision is published, closest first: National Day and Tet are usually announced not long before the year starts. Treat “Anchor only” rows as a placeholder for planning, not a confirmed closure date, and check back closer to the date if a trip depends on it.
Two examples of the shift
A weekend slips a deadline by days, not hours
Submit on a Thursday and the three working days land Friday, Monday, Tuesday - a decision by Tuesday, close to what “three days” suggests. Submit on a Friday instead, and Saturday and Sunday do not count. The clock effectively pauses for two calendar days before it starts moving again, so the same three working days land Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Nothing has gone wrong. The visa has taken three working days exactly as stated; it has just taken five calendar days to get there because of where in the week it landed.
A holiday break slips a deadline by a week or more
Take National Day 2026, which runs from Saturday 29 August through Wednesday 2 September. An application submitted on Thursday 27 August looks, at first glance, like it should clear by Monday 31 August. In practice, Friday 28 August is the only working day available before the break begins, so at most one of the three working days has been used when the office closes. The other two do not resume until Thursday 3 September and Friday 4 September - the first two working days after the holiday. A three-working-day estimate submitted two working days before a five-day break ends up taking eight calendar days rather than three.
Tet is the same mechanic at a larger scale. Vietnam’s Lunar New Year break in 2026 ran nine consecutive days, Saturday 14 February through Sunday 22 February, because the five statutory Tet days sat in the middle of two ordinary weekends. An application submitted on Friday 13 February - the last working day before the break - would not see its first working day of processing until Monday 23 February, and would not clear until Wednesday 25 February. Twelve calendar days for what is, on paper, a three-working-day service.
Counting backward from your flight date
The reliable way to pick a submission date is to work backward from the date you plan to enter Vietnam, not forward from today.
- Start from your intended entry date and subtract about two to three weeks. That is the sensible submission window for most applicants, per our page on how long a Vietnam e-visa takes.
- Check that window against the table above. If any part of it falls inside a listed break, the three working days effectively start counting from the first working day after that break ends, not from the day you submit.
- If a break sits inside your planned window, move your submission date earlier by roughly the length of the break, plus a couple of days of margin. There is no way to pay for faster handling once an application is in the queue, so the only lever available is applying earlier.
- When a trip is anchored to Tet or National Day specifically, treat the whole break as processing dead time and count your available working days from the far side of it, not the near side.
None of this requires precision to the day. The point of counting backward is to notice, before it matters, that a break sits between your submission date and your intended entry date - not to calculate an exact hour of approval.
Confirm before you book
Holiday dates in this table were checked mid-August 2026 against the government’s published 2026 schedule; the 2027 rows marked “Anchor only” are calendar and lunar-calendar facts, not government decisions, and are expected to be confirmed by a separate announcement closer to each date. If a submission date is load-bearing for a flight, verify the current schedule and processing time at evisa.gov.vn before booking anything non-refundable.