If your visa has lapsed past the airport-counter range, the exit permit is the document that gets you home. Here is the process, the paperwork, and the waiting.
An exit permit, also called an exit visa, is issued by Vietnam's immigration department. It is a stamp or certificate in your passport that says you may leave the country despite your immigration status having gone wrong. For people who overstayed, it is the formal end of the story: pay what you owe, get the permit, fly out on it.
Not everyone who overstays needs one. The rule of thumb is the 16-day line. If you are under 16 days past your stamp date, you can usually walk up to the immigration counter at the airport on departure day, pay the fine on the spot, and board. From 16 days, that option closes. The case moves to the immigration office, and the office issues an exit permit once the fine is settled. That document is what the airline and the exit officer will look at.
The permit exists for other situations too, like a lost or damaged passport or a newborn with a foreign nationality whose paperwork is unfinished. The overstay version is the one that matters here, and it follows its own fixed process.
The fines changed in December 2025 under Decree 282/2025, and the change rewrote how overstays are handled. Below 16 days the violation counts as minor: 500,000 to 2,000,000 VND, no deportation talk, settle it at the airport and leave. At 16 days the minimum fine jumps to 5,000,000 VND, deportation becomes a real possibility, and the case is too serious for a departure-day counter to wave through.
So the first question to answer is always: how many days over are you? Count from the date on your stamp, not from the date you think your visa ends. The stamp is the law. If the answer is under 16, head to the airport with cash and arrive four hours early. If it is 16 or more, stop planning around the airport and start planning around an immigration office visit. Our Vietnam visa overstay fines guide has the full bracket table and the calculator if you need to work out where you stand.
Exit permits are handled by the immigration office for the province where you are staying, not by a border gate and not by the airport. In Ho Chi Minh City that is the Immigration Department office at 196 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, District 3. In Hanoi it is at 44-46 Tran Phu Street, Ba Dinh. Other provinces have their own offices, and any visa agency can tell you the right address for where you live. Go in person; this process cannot be done online or through a courier.
Bring these, in order of importance:
The evidence matters more than people expect. Officers have discretion, and a documented reason like illness or a cancelled flight lands at the low end of your fine bracket. An unexplained "I lost track of the date" lands at the high end. If you have a sponsor or employer, a letter from them helps most of all.
Get to the office early, before the queue builds. The morning window is calmer and you want time in hand on your first visit.
Do not underestimate the first visit. Between the queue, the interview, and the payment, a morning can disappear, and if your paperwork is thin the officer may send you away to get more. Treat the first trip as reconnaissance as much as application.
A straightforward overstay case takes 3 to 7 working days from submission to collection. Simple cases at quiet offices lean toward the short end; anything the officer wants to verify pushes it out. Overstays of six months or more, cases where the passport itself is the problem, or explanations with no supporting evidence can stretch to weeks. The office does not rush for anyone, and holidays do not count as working days.
When the permit is issued, it is valid for up to 15 days from the issue date, and you must be out of Vietnam before that window closes. Check the date printed on the permit before you leave the office. Some people read "valid 15 days" as a suggestion; it is not. Overstay the permit itself and you are back in the same machinery, with worse optics the second time.
It is the most common mistake in this whole process, and it is understandable. You know you need to leave, the airline has a cheap fare, and booking feels like progress. But you do not yet know which day the permit will be ready, and the 15 day validity clock starts on the issue date, not on your booking date.
Book a fixed ticket for a specific day and one of two things happens. Either the permit is not ready in time and you eat the rebooking cost, or it lands with a validity window that does not line up with your flight and you are stuck with a permit ticking down while you wait for a departure you scheduled blind. Officers have also been known to ask why your ticket exists before your exit permit does, which is a question nobody enjoys answering.
The safe sequence is: submit, wait, collect the permit, then book. If you must hold something before collection, keep it refundable or book far enough out that the permit window comfortably covers it.
Two separate payments sit on top of each other. The first is the overstay fine itself, set by your bracket under Decree 282/2025. The second is the processing fee for the exit permit, which runs roughly 200,000 to 500,000 VND depending on the office and whether you ask for expedited handling.
Because the fine is the big number, and because it is calculated from your exact dates, do not guess it. Work your days out against the bracket table in the overstay fines guide, then add the permit fee on top. Bring cash in dong. Card payment is unreliable at these counters, and USD gets you a bad rate and a long face.
One warning about the cheap route: if you cannot pay the fine on the spot, the office can move toward deportation, and a deportation order is a different and much worse outcome than an exit permit. The fine is suspended in that case, not cancelled. It follows you, and so does the record.
On departure day, the airport part is ordinary: check in, hand over your passport at immigration, and the officer sees the exit permit and lets you through. Keep the fine receipt with you until you are airside. If anything looks off in the system, the receipt is your proof that the case was settled properly.
The record is the part nobody warns you about enough. Getting an exit permit clears your departure, but it does not erase the overstay from immigration's database. On your next application you may be granted a shorter visa, asked for extra documents, or questioned at the border. Officers read the history, and a clean history is worth more than any explanation letter you can write later.
That is why the advice on every expat forum ends the same way: never let the stamp lapse in the first place, because the cheapest fix is the one you do before the problem exists.
Every exit permit story starts the same way: a stamp that expired while someone was busy, sick, or sure they had more time. A visa run is the day trip that makes that story impossible to start. You leave Vietnam by land before your stamp expires, step into Cambodia or Laos, and cross straight back with a fresh entry stamp. No overstay, no fine, no office visit, no record.
The numbers make the point. A run from Ho Chi Minh City to Moc Bai costs about 1.5 to 2.5 million VND all in. The lightest overstay fine starts at 500,000 VND and the exit permit process eats days of your time on top. The run buys you 30 or 90 fresh days and leaves your record clean. The fine buys a receipt and a passport notation that follows you.
Two border hubs cover the network: the Cambodia route through Moc Bai or Xa Mat and the Laos route through Lao Bao, Na Meo, or Huu Nghi. The Moc Bai crossing guide walks the border step by step, and the complete visa run guide covers the whole decision from start to finish. The one rule to hold onto: run before the stamp dies, never after.
Find your local desk:
An exit permit, often called an exit visa, is a document from Vietnam's immigration department that lets a foreigner who has overstayed leave the country legally. It is usually a stamp or certificate in the passport, valid for up to 15 days from the issue date.
For an overstay of under 16 days, you can normally settle at the airport counter on departure day. From 16 days the airport counter closes: the immigration office handles the case and issues the exit permit after the fine is paid.
Normal cases take 3 to 7 working days from submission. Long overstays or cases with document problems can take weeks.
Not a fixed one. You will not know the collection date until the office tells you, and the 15 day validity runs from the issue date. Book after collection, or keep the ticket refundable.