Vietnam work permit exemption in 2026 comes down to two separate steps, and expats who stop at the first one get in trouble later: even foreigners in an exempt category are legally required to register that exemption with the licensing authority before they start work. Decree 219/2025/ND-CP, effective 7 August 2025, replaced the old Decree 152/2020/ND-CP and expanded the short-stay exemption threshold from 30 days spread across up to three visits a year to a full 90 cumulative days in one calendar year.
I’ve lived in Central Vietnam for years, run a company here, and watch this exact mistake play out with clients almost every quarter: someone reads “exempt” online, assumes it means “no paperwork,” and then hits a wall when their Temporary Residence Card renewal asks for a certificate they never filed for. If you’d rather just have someone check your specific situation against the new rule, that’s doable — but the categories below are worth knowing regardless of who files the paperwork.
What Changed Under Decree 219/2025/ND-CP?
Decree 219/2025/ND-CP restructures Vietnam’s foreign-labor rules into 36 articles across five chapters, covering exemption certificates, work permit issuance, renewals, and revocation grounds in one document instead of the patchwork of 152/2020 plus its 2023 amendment. It also formally repealed a short-lived overlapping rule, Decree 128/2025/ND-CP, that had touched the same area weeks earlier.
The headline change for most expats is the short-stay exemption: foreign managers, executive directors, experts, and technical workers no longer count days per visit. They now get a single cumulative allowance of under 90 days per calendar year (January 1 to December 31) before a Vietnam work permit becomes mandatory, up from the old cap of 30 days per trip and no more than three trips a year, according to Apolat Legal’s breakdown of the reform.
The decree also folded the separate “approval of foreign-labor demand” step into the main work permit application, cutting the standard processing timeline to roughly 10 working days for a full work permit, compared with 15 or more working days under the old two-decree process, per Vietnam Briefing’s summary of the new rules.
Who Is Exempt From a Vietnam Work Permit in 2026?
The exemption list under Decree 219/2025 carries forward most of the old categories from Decree 152/2020 (owners of large capital contributions, spouses of Vietnamese citizens, intra-company transferees, ODA experts, licensed lawyers, and short-term technical fixers) and adds a new one for priority sectors. It’s the same set of categories that shows up whenever someone asks about legal ways to hold a Vietnam work permit without going through the full process — which track applies, a light notification or a full certificate, depends on the category, not just whether you qualify.
| Exemption category | Registration track | Advance notice | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manager, director, expert or technician, under 90 cumulative days/year | Notification only | At least 3 working days | Decree 219/2025, Art. 9(4) |
| Married to a Vietnamese citizen and residing in Vietnam | Notification only | At least 3 working days | Decree 219/2025, Art. 9(4) |
| Owner or capital contributor, LLC or JSC, contribution ≥ VND 3 billion | Notification only | At least 3 working days | Decree 219/2025, Art. 9(4) |
| Foreign lawyer licensed to practice in Vietnam | Notification only | At least 3 working days | Decree 219/2025, Art. 9(4) |
| Priority-sector expert confirmed by ministries or provincial authorities (finance, science, tech, digital transformation) | Full WPEC | Standard WPEC dossier | Decree 219/2025, Art. 7(15) |
| Intra-company transferee within the 11 WTO-committed service sectors | Full WPEC | Standard WPEC dossier | Decree 219/2025, Art. 7 |
The biggest procedural shift is the notification-only track itself. Under the old Decree 152/2020, only two categories (licensed lawyers and spouses of Vietnamese citizens) could skip the full Work Permit Exemption Certificate and just notify the authority. Decree 219/2025 expanded that shortcut to 11 categories, which is why more expats now assume, wrongly, that no paperwork is needed at all.
Do You Still Need a Certificate If You’re Exempt?
Yes. Being exempt from the work permit itself is not the same as being exempt from registering that exemption, and this is the single most common compliance mistake flagged by Vietnam-licensed law firms working with foreign staff. Every exempt category still requires either a full Work Permit Exemption Certificate (WPEC) or, for the 11 lighter categories above, a written notification filed with the licensing authority before work starts.
A foreigner who assumes an exemption is automatic and never files anything is treated the same as someone with no permit at all if checked. There’s no separate, lesser penalty for “I thought I didn’t need paperwork” — the fine structure below applies regardless of whether the missing document was a full work permit or a WPEC.
How Do You Apply for a Work Permit Exemption Certificate?
Applying for a WPEC means assembling a documented case for your specific exemption category and filing it with the provincial licensing authority before your start date, not just showing up and working. Under Decree 219/2025, the authority issuing and revoking work permits and WPECs shifted from the Department of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs at provincial level to the Provincial People’s Committee, which can delegate the task to a specialized agency.
- Confirm which exemption category applies to your role and check whether it falls on the notification-only track (table above) or requires a full WPEC.
- Prepare the dossier: passport copy, a recent health check, and documentary proof of the exemption ground, such as a marriage certificate, capital contribution confirmation, or an assignment letter for intra-company transfers — the same core paperwork a full work permit application asks for.
- Have any document issued abroad legalized and translated into Vietnamese before submission — this step alone is where most delays happen for foreign-issued paperwork.
- Submit the dossier to the Provincial People’s Committee (or its designated agency) well ahead of your intended start date; the notification track needs at least 3 working days’ advance notice, while a full WPEC dossier follows the standard review timeline.
- Keep the issued WPEC or the filed notification on hand — it’s the document a Temporary Residence Card application, or a labor inspector, will ask to see.
What Happens If You Work Without a Permit or Certificate?
The financial risk falls on both sides. A foreign worker caught without a valid work permit or WPEC faces a fine of VND 15,000,000 to 25,000,000, with deportation as an additional possible penalty. Employers face their own separate fines, and sources differ on the exact tiering, so this is one figure worth double-checking directly with a local labor lawyer before you rely on it for a specific hiring decision.
An expired permit or certificate is treated exactly like never having had one. There’s no grace period between expiry and renewal, which is the scenario that catches people off guard most often when a WPEC’s two-year validity quietly runs out mid-project.
What Are the Grounds for Revoking a Work Permit or WPEC?
Decree 219/2025 spells out five specific grounds for revocation, replacing the old rule’s single vague reference to “failure to comply with the provisions of law.” A permit or certificate can now be revoked if the underlying documents expire, if either the employee or employer breaches obligations tied to issuance or renewal, if the employee faces criminal prosecution, if the employing company stops operating, or if the sending entity formally ends the assignment.
This matters for anyone whose visa status or Temporary Residence Card is tied to their WPEC: a revocation on any of these five grounds can cascade into the residence paperwork built on top of it, which is exactly why treating the certificate as a formality rather than an active document is a mistake.
Exempt or Not: What to Check Before You Start Working
The honest answer to “do I need a work permit” is rarely a flat yes or no — it’s “which of the two registration tracks applies to me, and have I actually filed it.” Company owners above the VND 3 billion threshold, spouses of Vietnamese citizens, and short-stay experts under 90 days now get the lighter notification route; everyone else, including most intra-company transferees and long-term hires, still needs the full certificate before day one on the job.
If you’re already deep in a Vietnam relocation and the visa side of it feels like the part nobody explains clearly, that’s the piece I usually get pulled into. I sort out which visa or extension actually fits your timeline while you deal with the work-permit side separately, and I keep the whole thing to a conversation rather than a stack of forms you have to decode yourself. Message me on Telegram with your situation and I’ll tell you what actually applies.