Vietnam Visa Overstay from Haiphong 2026

The numbers that matter this week

Most people who end up reading this page are three or four days over, not three months. If that is you, the cheapest possible outcome is still on the table, and the way to keep it is to go and report it rather than wait for a hotel receptionist or a police check to do it for you. Vietnamese immigration authorities treat a voluntary report as a mitigating factor. They do not treat a long silence that way.

Costs for a run itself, once the overstay is settled, are on the cost page (3.6M VND for the private car to Huu Nghi, or 6.0M VND with the 90-day e-visa filed). The border process is described hour by hour on the Huu Nghi page.

Overstay fines by day count

Decree 282/2025/ND-CP took effect on 15 December 2025 and replaced the penalty structure that had been in place since 2021. It kept the cheapest tier where it was and moved everything above it. There are seven brackets now instead of five, and the ceiling went from 20,000,000 VND to 40,000,000 VND.

• Under 16 days: 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND (about 19 to 76 USD)
• 16 to under 30 days: 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 VND (190 to 380 USD)
• 30 to under 60 days: 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 VND (380 to 570 USD)
• 60 to under 90 days: 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 VND (570 to 760 USD)
• 90 days to under 6 months: 20,000,000 to 25,000,000 VND (760 to 950 USD)
• 6 months to under a year: 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 VND (950 to 1,140 USD)
• A year or more: 30,000,000 to 40,000,000 VND (1,140 to 1,520 USD)

A single day over the line and a fifteen-day overstay land in the same bracket, which is the one piece of good news here. The bracket is set by the calendar, not by how the officer feels about your story, although the position inside the bracket is where a clean record and a voluntary report can help.

Why day 16 changes everything

The minimum fine goes from 2,000,000 VND to 5,000,000 VND the moment you pass fifteen days. That is a 2.5x jump on one day's difference, and it is deliberate. The 16-day mark is also the point where deportation becomes a sanction that authorities can add on top of the fine.

It is not automatic. The immigration department weighs how long you have been over, whether you reported it yourself, and whether there is anything else on the file, such as unregistered residence or work you were not allowed to do. What is consistent is that past day 16 you are no longer dealing with a counter transaction and a receipt. A file gets opened, and that changes the paperwork and the timeline for leaving.

A deportation order carries an entry ban. One to three years is the range most commonly reported for ordinary overstay cases, and the law allows up to five. The record is shared with Vietnamese diplomatic missions and every immigration checkpoint, so applying for a fresh e-visa and hoping the system missed it does not work.

You will also see an informal figure going around: about 500,000 VND per day, paid at the airport desk before departure. That reflects how some very short overstays have been handled in practice. It is not a rate in the decree, nobody can promise it, and it should not be the plan you build around.

What the 2026 decrees changed

Three documents matter for an overstay in 2026, and only the first one sets the money.

Decree 282/2025/ND-CP, signed 30 October 2025 and in force from 15 December 2025, replaced the 2021 penalty framework. It added two new brackets for long overstays, doubled the maximum fine, and increased what a company faces when it sponsors a foreign worker and lets them drift out of status. Failing sponsorship responsibilities now runs 20,000,000 to 25,000,000 VND, up from 5,000,000 VND.

Decree 59/2026/ND-CP, signed 13 February 2026 and effective 1 April 2026, rewrote how deportation is carried out and replaced a 2021 decree on the same subject. The process is digitalised. Anyone facing deportation must be given the decision at least 48 hours before enforcement, and has the right to contact their embassy or consulate, to an interpreter, and to legal representation. The change that mattered most in practice: a foreigner who cannot pay the fine can now be deported immediately instead of being held until the money appears. The fine is suspended, not cancelled. It sits on the file.

Decree 249/2026/ND-CP, dated 30 June 2026, covers how an expulsion order is actually executed, including where the person stays while the exit is arranged. People pending exit can be managed at their accommodation establishment rather than in a detention facility, which is a real change from how this used to work.

None of it is theoretical. In August 2026, immigration police in Khanh Hoa fined six Nigerian nationals 35,000,000 VND each for overstaying by more than a year, and fined two accommodation establishments a combined 61,500,000 VND for their part in it. The enforcement side of this has teeth now, in a way it did not two years ago.

Where to go in Haiphong

The immigration division of Haiphong City Police sits at No 2 Tran Binh Trong Street, in the Ngo Quyen part of town, a short taxi ride from the centre. The city merged with Hai Duong province on 1 July 2025 and the district tier disappeared with it, so the office now covers the whole enlarged municipality, the former Hai Duong side included, and Cat Hai out on the islands. Old district names still show up in addresses and on maps, which is why the same office gets listed under Ngo Quyen and under Le Chan depending on the website.

Take the passport, the expired visa or temporary residence slip, something showing where you have been staying, and cash in dong. Bring a written note if there was a reason for the delay, such as illness or a cancelled flight; documentation is the difference between a fine at the low end of the bracket and an argument you lose. The number published for residence queries is 069 278 5572, which is also the line hotels call about temporary residence declarations, but numbers like that go stale, so your hotel reception can usually confirm the current counter hours faster than a phone call from abroad. Government offices here work weekday mornings and afternoons with a long lunch, and shut at weekends and public holidays. If you are already past day 16, ask for the officer handling overstay files at the front desk rather than queuing for a routine stamp.

Do not book a flight or a car first. Sort the fine, and then plan the exit around what the office tells you.

A visa run does not erase the record

The plan most people arrive with is: pay the fine, drive up to Huu Nghi, come back the same evening on a fresh 90-day e-visa, done. The middle part is right. The order is wrong.

You cannot apply for a new visa or an extension while you are inside Vietnam in overstay status. The overstay has to be settled and the exit recorded before a new visa is processed. So the fine at the Haiphong office comes first, and the run comes second, on a date you can plan. Anyone who tells you a border hop fixes an overstay has the sequence backwards.

From Haiphong you have two ways out. The first is the Huu Nghi gate at Dong Dang in Lang Son, about 250 km north, 3.5 to 4 hours each way by private car, open 07:00 to 19:00. The second is a flight, and here the local detail matters: Cat Bi (HPH) is only 5 to 8 km from the city, but its international departures in 2026 run to Seoul Incheon and a handful of mainland China cities such as Guangzhou, Kunming and Nanning. Anything long-haul means a transfer to Noi Bai near Hanoi, roughly two hours up the expressway, plus the check-in time that airport demands.

Your hotel already knows the dates

Every registered accommodation in Vietnam has to file a temporary residence declaration for the foreigners staying there, and failing to declare a guest can cost the establishment up to 40,000,000 VND, which is the same ceiling as the worst overstay fine. The Khanh Hoa case above is the pattern: two guesthouses ended up 61,500,000 VND out of pocket between them over six overstayers. Hotel managers in Haiphong know this, which is why they start asking questions when a booking runs past a stamp.

Since 15 September 2026, Decree 286/2026/ND-CP has widened the coordination behind all of this. Immigration data is shared between the Ministry of Public Security, other ministries and provincial people's committees, and anyone inviting or sponsoring a foreigner is expected to coordinate the residence declaration with the accommodation establishment. The practical reading is simple. Asking a small guesthouse to keep you off the list does not hide your dates, and it puts them in line for a fine larger than yours.

If you are already over, the cheapest move is the one that costs you an afternoon: go to the office, report it, pay it, get the receipt, then travel.

Related reading

The fine schedule is national, so a page written for another city is still worth reading for the procedure: the Hanoi overstay guide walks through the same brackets and the formal case that opens past day 16. For a breakdown of how the day count translates into money, there is this day-by-day overstay fine table from the Da Nang desk of the same network.

For the visa side of the problem, NamVisa covers e-visa applications, extensions and the documents behind them, and Visarun.vn compares the border corridors for anyone who wants to see the whole map before choosing one. If your plan is a run once the file is clear, start with the Huu Nghi page and the 2026 cost breakdown.