Maltese passport holders need a visa to enter Vietnam, and holding an EU and Schengen passport does not change that. Here is what the visa requirements for Maltese citizens actually are, what they cost, how long they take, and why your neighbors in Italy and Luxembourg travel under a rule that does not reach Malta.
Yes, you need a visa. Malta is not on Vietnam's visa-exemption list, and that surprises almost everyone who checks, because so many European countries are.
Vietnam's 45-day exemption runs through two government resolutions. Resolution 44/NQ-CP of 7 March 2025 covers 12 countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Resolution 229/NQ-CP of 8 August 2025 adds 12 more: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. That is 24 countries, eighteen of them EU member states. Malta is on neither list.
⚠️ An EU passport is not a Vietnamese visa exemption, and Schengen has nothing to do with it. Vietnam grants these waivers country by country, by its own resolution, not to the EU or the Schengen area as a block. Fly out with an Italian friend and she walks into Hanoi visa-free for 45 days while you are stopped at the boarding gate in Malta without an approved eVisa. The one visa-waiver arrangement between the two countries covers diplomatic passport holders, as the Vietnamese embassy accredited to Malta has set out. An ordinary Maltese passport is not covered by it.
The rule has no length threshold either. Tourism, a family visit, a conference and short-term business all need a visa before you board.
There is a compensation, and not a small one. Resolution 127/NQ-CP opened the eVisa to citizens of every country and territory from 15 August 2023, as the Embassy of Vietnam in the United States sets out. A Maltese eVisa stretches to 90 days, single or multiple entry, and reaches you as a PDF. The Italian and Luxembourgish neighbors waved through without one get 45.
The list of places it works widened on 2 December 2025, when Resolution 389/NQ-CP folded in 41 further border gates. That brought Vietnam to 83 checkpoints: 17 airports, 27 land border gates and 39 seaports. Two of them, Long Thanh and Gia Binh, are counted before they open, leaving roughly 15 airports in service. Malta always arrives on somebody else's long-haul network, so you land at a large airport, and every large one qualifies.
Phu Quoc is the single place the rule bends. Any nationality gets 30 visa-free days on the island provided it is reached straight from abroad by air or sea, an onward ticket falls inside those 30 days, and the traveler goes no further than the island itself.
Maltese travel documents are among the world's strongest, which is why the gap catches people out. The July 2026 Henley Passport Index put Malta joint fifth with access to 185 destinations. Vietnam is not one of them. Companions on other passports can check our eligibility index by country.
No embassy trip, no visa-on-arrival queue. That first point carries real weight here, because Vietnam keeps no embassy in Valletta. Consular responsibility sits with the Embassy of Vietnam in Italy at 156 Via di Bravetta in Rome, whose ambassador is accredited to Malta as well. A paper visa would mean a flight to Rome or posting your passport out of the country.
We do not process visa-on-arrival letters. That route works at only a handful of airports, never at a land or sea border, and leaves you queuing after two connections. The eVisa is settled before you leave home and covers all 83 checkpoints.
Six things. Most stalled applications fail on the first two.
⚠️ Do not assume an emergency or temporary passport will be accepted. Nothing published by the Vietnamese government or its embassies settles the question either way, and guessing on your behalf is not something we are prepared to do. Use the ordinary Maltese passport if you hold one. If a temporary document is the only one in your hands, ring +84 832 320 320 before any money changes hands.
| Option | Validity | Our fee (per applicant) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Month Single Entry | 30 days from arrival | $54 |
| 1 Month Multiple Entry | 30 days from arrival | $84 |
| 3 Month Single Entry | 90 days from arrival | $94 |
| 3 Month Multiple Entry | 90 days from arrival | $104 |
All prices include the Vietnam Immigration Department's stamp fee. Here is the arithmetic. Vietnam charges $25 for a single-entry eVisa and $50 for a multiple-entry one, a rate set by Circular 28/2026/TT-BTC and unchanged since 1 April 2026. On a $54 single-entry order, $25 goes to Vietnam and $29 is our fee for preparing, checking, filing and chasing it.
You can skip us and apply yourself at evisa.gov.vn for the stamp fee alone. Some travelers should: with three weeks in hand and a straightforward passport, that is the cheaper route. What you pay us for is the review, the correction, and a human who answers when something goes wrong. The full fee breakdown lists every add-on. Either way, a refusal does not return the stamp fee.
Three speeds, all priced per applicant:
None of those counts begins at checkout. Each begins when the file lands at Vietnam Immigration, which is usually inside 2 business hours of your payment clearing. Vietnam's statutory standard for a decision is 3 working days, 3 to 5 is what actually happens, and a Vietnamese public holiday stretches it further. Tet closes the offices for several days at a time.
That schedule is not ours to control. Filing quickly, chasing and correcting are ours; issuing is the department's. File one to two weeks before departure and the choice of speed stops mattering. Flying inside 24 hours? Phone the hotline before you pay, and if we cannot deliver we will say so and refund you.
The name on the visa matters far less than the shape of the itinerary. If Vietnam is one arrival and one departure, single entry does the whole job.
Multiple entry becomes the right call the moment your route leaves Vietnam and comes back. Nobody flies 17 hours from Malta for one country, and a trip built around a long summer break often picks up Cambodia, Laos or Thailand in the middle. Cross out on a single-entry visa and it is spent. The upgrade costs $30 on a one-month visa, $10 on a three-month one. When in doubt, choose multiple entry.
On the photograph the government form says almost nothing: straight on, no glasses, and there the instruction ends. That silence is why rejected images stall so many applications. Five points cover what passes:
A phone photo against a white wall in daylight works. A cropped wedding photo does not.
Malta has no nonstop service to Asia, so where you land is decided by the hub you connect through. Noi Bai in Hanoi (HAN) takes the largest share, helped by a routing that did not exist before July 2025: Vietnam Airlines now flies nonstop between Milan Malpensa and Hanoi three times a week, and Malpensa is a short hop from Malta.
Tan Son Nhat in Ho Chi Minh City (SGN) is the other main gate, reached through Istanbul year round or Doha in summer. Da Nang (DAD) is an eVisa checkpoint and the gateway to Hoi An and Hue, but from Malta it usually needs a second connection through Bangkok or Singapore. Phu Quoc (PQC) is a checkpoint in its own right and is reachable on a domestic hop.
Once Vietnam is one leg of a wider Southeast Asian loop, the other 66 checkpoints matter. Twenty-seven are land crossings, covering an overland return from Cambodia or Laos, and 39 are seaports. The issued eVisa no longer prints a port of entry, so nominating Hanoi and landing elsewhere is not a problem.
Separately, Vietnam has begun asking arrivals to file information before they board. The Immigration Department's Pre-Arrival Information system at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn opened at Tan Son Nhat on 15 April 2026, took in Phu Quoc on 1 June and reached Noi Bai and Da Nang on 15 June 2026. Passport, flight and accommodation details go in within the three days before you land, and a QR code comes back. Vietnamese state media describes it as mandatory, the UK Foreign Office says it is not currently a legal requirement, so file it at those four airports. It is a declaration, not a visa.
Decree 282/2025 replaced Decree 144/2021 on 15 December 2025 and made staying past your exit date a far more expensive mistake. The ceiling went from VND 20 million to VND 40 million, about USD 1,520, double what it had been.
Below that ceiling the penalty is banded by how long you ran over. Fewer than 16 days costs VND 500,000 to 2 million, USD 19 to 76 or so. Sixteen to 30 days moves up to VND 5 to 10 million, and the bands keep rising to the VND 40 million ceiling. Those dollar equivalents are December 2025 conversions and will have drifted.
The fine, though, is the smaller half of the problem. Overstaying is also grounds for deportation and for a ban on returning, and the UK Foreign Office notes that Vietnamese authorities can hold you in the country until the fine is paid. With no direct flight home, a missed departure means rebuilding a two-leg routing to Malta from scratch.
⚠️ The eVisa's exit date is set at issue, not at the border. Its validity window is calculated from the entry date you typed into the form, so landing three days behind schedule buys you nothing at the far end. The date printed on the PDF is the one that counts, not the one stamped in your passport.
Because Vietnam grants its waivers to named countries by resolution, not to the EU or Schengen. Resolutions 44/NQ-CP and 229/NQ-CP name 24 countries between them, eighteen of them EU members, and Malta is not one. Schengen is an internal European arrangement and carries no weight at Vietnamese immigration.
Check whether the second one appears on either resolution. Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg all sit on the 45-day list, so one of those travels visa-free for up to 45 days. Enter and leave Vietnam on the same passport, and read our Italian eligibility page if that is the one.
No. Vietnam has no mission in Valletta and consular work for Malta runs through Rome, so a sticker visa would mean a trip to Italy or posting your passport abroad. The eVisa removes that: apply from home, and it arrives as a PDF.
The Henley Passport Index placed Malta joint fifth in July 2026, with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 185 destinations, level with Austria, Greece, Portugal and Switzerland. Vietnam sits outside that count, so here the passport does not help you.
Strictly, no. Thirty days on Phu Quoc are visa-free if the island is reached directly from abroad by air or sea and you never leave it. Nothing flies there from Europe, so a Maltese routing means an airside transfer in Ho Chi Minh City onto a domestic sector, which still counts as direct. Most travelers buy the eVisa regardless, because one mainland night cancels the waiver.
Getting there costs the better part of a day. Malta International Airport has no service to Asia at all, and the 32 airlines serving the island fly almost entirely within Europe. Two routings do the work. Milan Malpensa is about two hours away and connects onto the Vietnam Airlines nonstop to Hanoi, roughly 12 hours, on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Istanbul, served around 74 times a month from Malta, reaches Hanoi in about 9 hours 30 minutes and Ho Chi Minh City in about 10 hours 20 minutes. Frankfurt, Munich and Rome are alternatives, and Qatar Airways runs four flights a week to Doha in summer. Budget 17 to 22 hours door to door.
Vietnam is five or six hours ahead, and which one depends on the month. Vietnam sits at UTC+7 and does not observe daylight saving. Malta keeps Central European Time at UTC+1 and shifts to UTC+2 for European summer time, which under EU Directive 2000/84/EC runs from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. Vietnam is therefore 5 hours ahead of Valletta in summer and 6 in winter, so our 08:00 to 21:00 support window falls at roughly 03:00 to 16:00 Malta time in summer, 02:00 to 15:00 in winter. Our guide to time in Vietnam has the detail.
Plan around the Maltese calendar as well as the Vietnamese one. Malta keeps fourteen paid national and public holidays a year, set out in the National Holidays and Other Public Holidays Act. A high count by European standards means more closed days if a document has to be reissued. August is the tightest month: Santa Marija falls on the 15th, the village feast season runs either side of it, and it is the peak of the outbound travel year. September stacks Victory Day on the 8th against Independence Day on the 21st. Have your eVisa in hand before those weeks.
Payment is in US dollars. Your bank converts from euro at its own rate, so expect a small gap between the price you see and your statement. Vietnam runs on the dong, and card acceptance is good in the cities but thin outside them.
The two countries are busier with each other than they were. Vietnam and Malta opened diplomatic relations on 14 January 1974, marked the fiftieth anniversary in 2024, and now share a double taxation agreement and a Vietnamese community of about 400 people. Before you fly, our Vietnam visa guide and our answers to common visa questions cover the rest.