What Changed, and Exactly When
On 31 December 2025, Viet Nam deposited its instrument of accession to the Convention of 5 October 1961 Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents — the treaty everyone calls the Apostille Convention. The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) confirmed the deposit in January 2026 and recorded that the Convention would enter into force for Viet Nam on 11 September 2026, bringing the treaty to 129 Contracting Parties.
Those two dates trip people up constantly, so it is worth being blunt about it. Accession is not the same as entry into force. Nothing changed on 31 December 2025. Nothing has changed on any day since. Viet Nam is, as of the date this guide was written, still a non-Hague destination in every practical sense: the Vietnamese Embassy in London is still legalising documents, Vietnamese employers and lawyers are still asking for legalised paperwork, and a UK document sent to Hanoi with an apostille and nothing else will still be rejected. The switch flips on 11 September 2026 and not a day earlier.
⚖️ Why the gap between accession and effect?
Article 12 of the Convention builds in a waiting period. When a state accedes rather than ratifying as an original signatory, the existing Contracting Parties are given six months from notification in which to object. An objection is not a veto on the accession itself — it simply means the Convention does not enter into force between the objecting state and the acceding state. Where that happens, the two countries carry on using consular legalisation with each other while everyone else moves to apostilles. It is rare, but it has happened with other accessions, which is why it is worth checking rather than assuming.
✅ Verified: the UK has not objected
We checked the HCCH record specifically for this. No Contracting Party has lodged an objection to Viet Nam's accession, and the United Kingdom is not among any objectors. That matters commercially, because an objection by the UK would have meant British documents continued to need embassy legalisation for Viet Nam indefinitely while, say, French or German documents did not. The apostille route between the UK and Viet Nam will operate normally from 11 September 2026. We re-check the HCCH status table before quoting on any Vietnamese order, and we will re-verify on the day itself.
🇻🇳 What Viet Nam has been doing to prepare
This is not a paper accession that quietly fails to happen on the ground. Viet Nam has been visibly building the machinery. In February 2026 the government approved an implementation plan by decision of the Deputy Prime Minister, with a deadline of 11 September 2026 for completing preparations. The plan covers designating competent authorities, building the specimen-signature databases that apostille issuance depends on, publishing guidance for the domestic bodies that will have to accept incoming foreign apostilles, and enabling online submission of apostille applications through the national public service portal.
The designated competent authority is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: the Consular Department in Hanoi, together with the Departments of Foreign Affairs in Ho Chi Minh City and other designated provincial offices. Those are the bodies that will issue apostilles on Vietnamese documents going abroad. For UK readers the more relevant point is the other direction: the same ministry is behind the guidance instructing Vietnamese authorities — the labour departments that issue work permits, the immigration offices that issue temporary residence cards, the notary offices, the business registration offices — to accept a foreign apostille in place of a consular legalisation stamp.
🌐 Where this puts Viet Nam among your other destinations
Viet Nam is the latest in a run of accessions that has steadily shrunk the list of countries needing full embassy attestation. India has been a member since 2005, Saudi Arabia since December 2022, China since November 2023 and Canada since January 2024. Each of those transitions produced exactly the same confusion we are seeing now, and each settled down within a few weeks of the effective date.
What remains firmly outside the Convention, and where the full consular chain still applies with no change on the horizon, includes the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Thailand and Egypt. If you are moving between Vietnamese and Gulf paperwork — which a surprising number of engineering and education clients do — do not let the Vietnamese change lull you into assuming the same applies elsewhere. It does not. Our What Do I Need? tool covers 127+ countries and gives the current answer for each.
What It Means for UK Documents: Old Chain vs New Chain
Strip away the treaty language and the change is one step and one stamp. Here is the same document — say an ACRO police certificate for a work permit in Ho Chi Minh City — on either side of the date.
Until 10 September 2026
- 1. Solicitor or notary certification, if the document is a copy, a translation, a reference letter or a private company document
- 2. FCDO apostille — the UK government's authentication
- 3. Embassy of Viet Nam, London — consular legalisation applied on top of the apostille
- 4. Vietnamese translation, notarised in Viet Nam
- 5. Submission to the Vietnamese authority
Our price
From £150
Apostille plus embassy legalisation, per document
From 11 September 2026
- 1. Solicitor or notary certification, if the document is a copy, a translation, a reference letter or a private company document
- 2. FCDO apostille — and the UK stage is finished
- 3. Embassy of Viet Nam, London
- 3. Vietnamese translation, notarised in Viet Nam
- 4. Submission to the Vietnamese authority
Our price
£90 — £120
£90 official originals, £120 with solicitor certification
Three observations that are easy to miss when you look at that comparison.
The apostille itself does not change. It is the same FCDO certificate, from the same office, at the same price, attached the same way. If you already hold an apostilled UK document with no embassy stamp on it, that document becomes usable in Viet Nam on 11 September without you doing anything at all. This is genuinely common: people who apostilled a degree certificate for one country and then took a job in Viet Nam frequently already hold what they need.
The solicitor question is unaffected. Whether your document needs certification by a UK solicitor before the FCDO will touch it depends on what the document is, not on where it is going. An ACRO certificate, a GRO birth or marriage certificate, a degree certificate issued and signed by the university, or a court order all go straight to the FCDO at £90. A photocopy, a translation, an employment reference on company letterhead, a board resolution or a statutory declaration needs the solicitor step first, at £120. Our guide to the FCDO apostille process explains the underlying rule: the FCDO can only authenticate a signature it holds a specimen of.
The Vietnamese translation stays. Of everything in this guide, this is the point that generates the most misplaced optimism. The apostille replaces the embassy stamp. It does not replace the requirement to hand a Vietnamese-language document to a Vietnamese official. Section 8 covers that in detail.
💡 The saving in plain numbers
A typical UK work permit file for Viet Nam is three documents: an ACRO police certificate, a degree certificate and an employment reference letter. Under the old route that is from £450 at our from-£150 embassy rate. From 11 September the same file is £90 + £90 + £120 = £300, and it comes back several days sooner because the embassy stage disappears. For a family relocating with a spouse and children, add marriage and birth certificates and the gap widens accordingly.
Should You Submit Now or Wait? The Decision Guide
This is the question we are being asked several times a week, and it deserves a proper answer rather than a shrug. The trade-off is simple to state and genuinely difficult to get right: waiting saves you at least £60 per document and a few days of embassy processing; waiting also risks missing a date that may be worth thousands.
Start by answering one question honestly. When does the document actually have to be in the hands of a Vietnamese authority? Not when you would like it done, not when you are flying — when it is submitted. Everything follows from that.
Submission before roughly 20 September 2026 → go now, old route
If your file has to be lodged in Viet Nam in early or mid-September, do not gamble on the switchover. Even though the Convention takes effect on the 11th, the Vietnamese officer receiving your file in that first week or two may be seeing their first foreign apostille. To be clear about what is fact and what is our judgement: from 11 September the apostille alone is officially sufficient, and you are entitled to rely on it. Our caution is based on what we saw after China, Saudi Arabia and Canada joined — for a few weeks some officials still asked for the stamp they were used to. If your submission falls in that window and a rejection would cost you a start date, the belt-and-braces option is the old route at from £150. If a short delay would not hurt you, the apostille at £90 is the correct and cheaper choice, and we will say so if you call us.
Submission from October 2026 onwards → wait, apostille only
If nothing is submitted until October or later, there is no argument for paying the embassy fee. Order the apostille in the first half of September, have it back within days, and save £60 or more per document. You can even order now and simply not use the embassy stage — see the “apostille first, decide later” approach below, which is what we recommend to most people in this group.
Genuinely unsure → get the apostille now, hold the embassy step
The apostille is required on both routes. It is never wasted money and it never expires. So take the apostille out of the critical path immediately — next working day with us — and keep the embassy decision open until you know your submission date. If it turns out you need the embassy stamp, we add it; if the date slips past the 11th, you have already finished and paid £90 instead of £150. This is the risk-free play and it is available to almost everyone reading this in early August.
📊 Two worked scenarios
Scenario 1: James, engineer, start date 15 September
James has accepted a role with a manufacturer in Bac Ninh. His Vietnamese employer needs the work permit file — ACRO certificate, degree certificate, five-year experience letter — lodged with the provincial labour department in the last week of August so the permit issues in time for a mid-September start. Work permit processing in Viet Nam runs to about 20 working days from a complete file, so the employer wants everything in hand before the end of August.
The answer is: go now, old route. His documents must be submitted a fortnight before the Convention takes effect. An apostille alone would be legally meaningless in Viet Nam on the day of submission.
Cost: three documents on the full route — from £450. Timeline: allow around ten working days end to end for the solicitor, FCDO and embassy stages, plus courier to Viet Nam.
The trap he nearly fell into: his recruiter told him to “just wait for September and save the money”. Waiting would have pushed his start date into October, cost him a month's salary, and forced his employer to re-run the labour-market justification. He saved £180 in fees and lost far more than that. Do the arithmetic on the whole outcome, not on the invoice.
Scenario 2: Priya, teacher, start date 1 November
Priya has a contract with an international school in Ho Chi Minh City starting after the October half-term. The school's HR team wants her documents by the second week of October. She needs a degree certificate, a TEFL certificate, an ACRO police certificate and her marriage certificate for her spouse's dependant paperwork — four documents.
The answer is: wait — but not passively. Her submission is comfortably after 11 September, so she needs apostilles only. Four documents at £90–£120 instead of four at £150+ saves her somewhere between £240 and £300.
What she should do in August, not September: apply to ACRO now. The standard ACRO service runs to 20 working days and the certificate has a six-month shelf life for Vietnamese work permit purposes — so an application made in early August produces a certificate that is fresh in October and still fresh in February. The apostille takes a day; the police certificate is the long pole.
She should also apostille the degree and TEFL certificates now. The apostille is identical on both routes, it costs the same, and it does not expire. Getting it done in August removes the risk of a September rush and leaves her only the embassy decision — which, given her October submission, is simply “no”.
⚠️ The one thing that should override the cost saving
If a Vietnamese lawyer, employer or school has told you in writing what their file must contain, do what they say and send us the requirement. Vietnamese in-country advisers are the ones who will hand your file across a counter, and if they want a legalised document in the first week of the new regime because they have not yet seen an apostille accepted, that is a rational position and arguing with it costs you more than £60. We will tell you honestly if we think a request is out of date — but we will not talk you into a document your own adviser has said they will not submit.
📞 Not sure which side of the date you are on?
Tell us the document, the Vietnamese authority it goes to and the submission date, and we will give you a straight answer in one call — including whether waiting is worth it in your case.
Documents Already Legalised Under the Old System — Do They Stay Valid?
Yes. If you have already paid for an FCDO apostille plus Vietnamese Embassy legalisation, that money is not wasted and that document does not stop working on 11 September 2026.
The reason is structural rather than a matter of anyone's goodwill. The Apostille Convention abolishes the requirement of consular legalisation between Contracting Parties. It says, in effect, “you may no longer demand this extra step”. It does not say that authentications carried out under the previous system are void, and neither the Convention text nor Viet Nam's implementing decision contains any provision cancelling past legalisations. A document bearing a genuine FCDO apostille and a genuine legalisation stamp from the Embassy of Viet Nam is a document whose signatures and seals have been verified twice over. Nothing about 11 September makes that less true.
💬 The distinction that actually catches people out
Documents are rejected in Viet Nam far more often for freshness than for authentication. Vietnamese rules require a criminal record certificate to have been issued within six months of the date the work permit application is submitted. That rule has nothing to do with the apostille change and it does not become more lenient afterwards. If your ACRO certificate was issued in March 2026 and your file is lodged in October 2026, it will be refused — not because of the switchover, but because it is seven months old. Check the issue date of every dated document in your file before you check anything else.
🔄 Do you need to re-do anything?
In three situations, and only three, is it worth revisiting a completed document.
The document has gone out of date on its own terms
Police certificates, medical certificates and some company extracts have limited lives. Reissue and re-apostille. After 11 September that is £90, not £150 — so the change works in your favour on the re-run.
The Vietnamese authority kept your original
Labour departments, immigration offices and business registration offices frequently retain documents. If you need a second process later, you will need a second authenticated copy — and that second copy only needs an apostille now.
The apostille and the legalisation have been separated
The certificates are physically attached for a reason. If the staple or eyelet has been removed, or the pages photocopied apart, the chain is broken and the receiving officer is entitled to refuse the lot. Never detach, never laminate.
Outside those three cases, a legalised document from July or August 2026 is a perfectly good document in December 2026. Put it in the file and submit it.
The UK Documents You Need for Vietnam — and How Each Is Handled
Which documents you need depends entirely on what you are doing in Viet Nam. Four routes cover the overwhelming majority of the UK enquiries we handle: employment, long-stay residence, marriage, and setting up a business. In each case the authentication step is what changes on 11 September; the document list does not.
💼 Work permit (giấy phép lao động)
The work permit is the anchor document for almost every British professional in Viet Nam, and it is the file most affected by this change because it contains the most foreign documents. A standard file includes:
| UK document | Solicitor needed? | From 11 Sept | Until 10 Sept |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACRO police certificate | No — government original | £90 | From £150 |
| Degree certificate (original, signed by the university) | No | £90 | From £150 |
| Employment reference / experience letter | Yes — private document | £120 | From £150 |
| Professional or teaching certificate (TEFL, CELTA, chartered body) | Usually yes | £120 | From £150 |
| Passport copy | Yes — certified copy | £120 | From £150 |
Prices per document and inclusive of the FCDO fee. The health check is normally done in Viet Nam at an approved hospital and needs no UK authentication. Work permit processing in Viet Nam runs to around 20 working days from a complete file — plan at least 30 days ahead of your start date.
Two points on the ACRO certificate specifically, because it is the single most common cause of a delayed Vietnamese work permit. First, Vietnamese rules require the criminal record certificate to have been issued within six months of the submission date. Second, ACRO's own standard service runs to 20 working days, with a premium service at up to two working days for a higher fee. That combination — slow to obtain, quick to go stale — is why the ACRO certificate should be the first thing you order and the last thing you allow to sit in a drawer. Our ACRO police certificate guide covers the fees, the service levels and how to plan backwards from a visa date.
On degrees: the FCDO will apostille an original degree certificate carrying the university's signature and seal without solicitor certification, at £90. A photocopy, a transcript printed from a student portal, or a HEDD verification email all need certification first. If your certificate is lost, order a replacement from the university before considering the solicitor route — it is usually cheaper and always cleaner. See our degree certificate apostille guide for the detail.
🏪 Temporary residence card (TRC)
Once the work permit is issued, the TRC is what turns a series of visas into settled status for the length of your employment. The TRC application itself is largely handled in-country by your employer's HR or a licensed agent, drawing on the work permit that has already been granted — so the UK-side authentication burden is mostly discharged at the work permit stage. Where extra UK documents do appear, it is usually for dependants: a marriage certificate to bring a spouse, and birth certificates for children. Both are GRO originals, both go straight to the FCDO with no solicitor step, and both are £90 each from 11 September.
💍 Marriage in Viet Nam, or registering a UK marriage there
If you are marrying a Vietnamese national in Viet Nam, the Vietnamese authorities will want proof that you are free to marry — in UK terms a Certificate of No Impediment issued by a UK register office, or in some cases a single status statutory declaration — plus, if you have been married before, a decree absolute or final order. A CNI issued by a register office and a decree absolute sealed by a UK court are both public documents and are apostilled directly at £90; a statutory declaration is a private document and needs the solicitor route at £120.
Going the other way, if you married in the UK and need the marriage recognised in Viet Nam — for a dependant visa, for property, for inheritance — you need the certified copy of the marriage entry from the GRO, NRS or GRONI, apostilled. Our marriage certificate apostille guide explains exactly which version the FCDO accepts and which commemorative certificates get rejected.
🏢 Company formation, investment and representative offices
Viet Nam's business registration and investment registration offices are among the heaviest users of foreign document authentication, and they are also the group with the most to gain from this change — a company file can easily run to eight or ten documents. The usual list is a certificate of incorporation, a certificate of good standing, articles of association, a board resolution appointing the legal representative, audited accounts or a bank reference demonstrating financial capacity, and passport copies for directors and shareholders.
Almost all of those are private or copy documents and therefore need solicitor or notary certification before the FCDO stage — £120 each from 11 September, against from £150 each today. Companies House certificates issued with a wet signature can sometimes go directly, and we will tell you which of yours qualifies rather than defaulting everything to the solicitor route. If your Vietnamese incorporation is scheduled for the autumn, this is the single largest saving available to anyone reading this guide.
★ Quick checklist before you order anything for Viet Nam
- ☐ Confirm the submission date in Viet Nam — not your flight date
- ☐ Check the issue date of every police or medical certificate against the six-month rule
- ☐ Identify which documents are originals and which are copies — that sets £90 vs £120
- ☐ Ask your Vietnamese employer or lawyer for their written document list
- ☐ Arrange the Vietnamese translation in Viet Nam, after the apostille, never before
- ☐ Order two copies of anything the authority is likely to keep
The New Process, Step by Step (from 11 September 2026)
From 11 September the UK side of a Vietnamese document file is short enough to describe in a paragraph, which is precisely the point of the Convention.
Step 1 — Establish whether the document needs solicitor certification
Official originals signed by a UK public official go straight to the FCDO: ACRO certificates, GRO / NRS / GRONI birth, marriage and death certificates, Certificates of No Impediment, court orders and decrees, degree certificates signed and sealed by the awarding university. Everything else — photocopies, translations, letters on company letterhead, board resolutions, statutory declarations, passport copies — must first be certified by a practising UK solicitor or notary. We handle that in-house; you do not need to find your own solicitor.
Step 2 — FCDO apostille
The FCDO attaches its numbered apostille certificate, carrying its seal and the signature of a legalisation officer, physically to your document. With LegaliseNow this happens the next working day after we receive the document. The apostille has no expiry date and can be verified by any receiving authority against the FCDO's online register — which is exactly why Vietnamese officials will be able to rely on it.
Step 3 — Nothing. The UK stage is finished.
No embassy appointment, no consular fee, no cash payment at a counter in Kensington, no second courier leg. This is the whole of the change, and it is worth stating plainly because a number of agents will continue quoting for an embassy step that no longer exists. If anyone quotes you for Vietnamese embassy legalisation on a document being submitted after 11 September 2026, ask them why.
Step 4 — Vietnamese translation, notarised in Viet Nam
This step survives the change untouched. The document and its apostille are translated into Vietnamese and the translation is notarised at a Vietnamese notary office or a licensed translation company. Order matters: apostille first, translate afterwards, so that the translation covers the apostille as well as the document.
Step 5 — Submission
Your employer, lawyer or agent lodges the file with the relevant Vietnamese authority — the provincial Department of Home Affairs or labour authority for a work permit, the immigration office for a TRC, the Department of Justice for marriage, the business registration office for a company.
Expect friction The first few weeks
Every accession we have worked through — China in November 2023, Canada in January 2024, Saudi Arabia in December 2022 — produced a short settling-in period where individual officials, unfamiliar with the new certificate, asked for the consular stamp they were used to seeing. It resolves, usually within a few weeks, once the ministry guidance filters down. If you are submitting in the first fortnight and can afford neither a delay nor an argument, the belt-and-braces option is to submit before the 11th under the old rules. If you are submitting from October onwards, this is not something you need to think about.
The Old Process, Step by Step (until 10 September 2026)
If your document has to be in Viet Nam before the Convention takes effect, this is the route — and it is a live service with us right now, priced from £150 per document.
Step 1 — Solicitor or notary certification, where required
Identical to the new process. Copies, translations, letters and company documents are certified by a practising UK solicitor or notary so that the FCDO has a signature it can authenticate.
Step 2 — FCDO apostille
Also identical. And this is why the “apostille now, decide the embassy step later” approach works: whichever side of the date you end up on, the apostille is required and is never wasted.
Step 3 — Legalisation at the Embassy of Viet Nam, London
The apostilled document, a photocopy of it and a completed legalisation application form are submitted to the consular section of the Embassy of Viet Nam at 12–14 Victoria Road, London W8 5RD. The consular section operates limited morning hours, Monday to Friday. Published consular fees are £40 per document for the standard service, taking around five working days, and £60 per document for the express service at one working day — payable in cash. The embassy will not accept a document that does not already carry an original FCDO apostille.
Step 4 — Vietnamese translation, notarised in Viet Nam
Exactly as under the new process. The apostille and the embassy stamp are both translated along with the document.
⌛ Realistic timeline on the old route
For a straightforward original document with no solicitor step: one working day for the apostille, plus the embassy stage, plus courier legs in both directions. Budget five to eight working days end to end using the embassy express service, or eight to twelve on the standard service. Add two to three days if solicitor certification is needed, and add the document-sourcing time on top — the ACRO certificate at up to 20 working days is almost always the longest single element.
One live warning for August 2026: we expect the Vietnamese consular section to get busier as the deadline approaches, because everyone with a September submission is trying to get in before the 11th. If you need the old route, start now rather than in the last fortnight.
For a sense of what this chain looks like in a country that is not about to join, our Working in Thailand guide and Working in the UAE guide walk through the same structure — and both remain fully applicable, because neither country is a Convention member.
Vietnamese Translation & Notarisation — What Does Not Change
If you take one thing from this guide beyond the date, take this: the apostille replaces the embassy stamp, not the translation. Nothing in the Apostille Convention obliges a country to accept documents in a foreign language. Article 4 even allows the apostille itself to be issued in the language of the issuing authority. Viet Nam conducts its administration in Vietnamese, and it will carry on doing so on 12 September exactly as it did on 10 September.
📝 What Vietnamese authorities actually require
Foreign documents submitted to Vietnamese authorities — labour departments for work permits, immigration for residence cards, the Department of Justice for marriage, business registration offices for companies — must be accompanied by a Vietnamese translation that has been notarised. In practice that means a translation produced by a licensed translation company or a translator registered with a notary office in Viet Nam, with the notary certifying the translator's signature and competence. A translation done by a friend, by software, or by a UK agency without Vietnamese notarisation will not be accepted, however good it is.
❌ The order-of-operations mistake
Translate after the apostille, never before. If the translation is produced first, it physically cannot include the apostille — which is attached afterwards — and the receiving officer sees a Vietnamese text that does not correspond to the full English document in front of them. This is one of the most common rejection reasons across every jurisdiction we work with, and it is entirely avoidable. Apostille the English document, then have the document and its apostille translated together as a single set. Our apostille and translation guide explains the rule in full and covers when a UK-side certified translation is the better option.
🌐 Should you translate in the UK or in Viet Nam?
For most people, in Viet Nam is both cheaper and safer. Vietnamese notary offices and licensed translation companies produce exactly the format the receiving authority expects, at local prices, and your employer or agent almost certainly has one they use routinely. Ask them before you spend money on a UK translation.
There are two exceptions. If you need to submit remotely — to a Vietnamese consulate abroad, or to a partner who cannot handle the paperwork — a UK certified translation may be the practical route, in which case the translation itself is a private document, needs solicitor certification, and gets its own apostille at £120. And if a Vietnamese counterpart has specifically asked for a translation certified in the UK, follow their instruction rather than this guide.
📑 A note on what the apostille does and does not say
An apostille verifies that a signature, seal or stamp on a document is genuine and was applied by someone with authority to apply it. It says nothing about the content of the document, and it certainly does not certify that a translation is accurate. A Vietnamese official who queries the substance of your experience letter or the equivalence of your degree is asking a question the apostille was never designed to answer. That is normal and it happens on both sides of 11 September.
Common Pitfalls and Timing Traps
Transitions like this one generate a specific set of expensive mistakes. Here are the ones we are already seeing in August 2026, and the ones we expect over the next two months.
✗ 1. The ACRO validity window colliding with the switchover
The trap: a criminal record certificate must be less than six months old when the Vietnamese work permit file is submitted, but ACRO's standard service can take up to 20 working days to produce it. Someone who applies to ACRO in late August to “be ready for the new rules” may not hold the certificate until late September — and someone who obtained an ACRO certificate back in April to beat the rush may find it is out of time by the time their October file goes in. Work backwards from the submission date, not forwards from today, and if the timing is tight use ACRO's premium service rather than the standard one.
✗ 2. Documents in transit across the date
A document sitting at the embassy on 10 September comes back legalised and remains valid — no harm done. The waste is financial rather than legal: paying an embassy fee for a document you will not actually submit until October. If you are within two weeks of the changeover and have not yet sent anything to the embassy, pause and call us. If your document is already at the embassy, leave it there and collect it; withdrawing it costs more than it saves.
✗ 3. The pre-deadline embassy backlog
Consular sections get busy in the run-up to a change like this, and the Vietnamese consular section in London operates limited morning hours with a small team. Expect the standard five-working-day service to feel more like a week and a half through late August and early September. If you genuinely need the old route, build in slack or pay for the express service. This is the single most predictable cause of a missed September deadline.
✗ 4. Assuming the change is retroactive
It is not. A document apostilled on 1 September but submitted in Viet Nam on 5 September is being submitted under the old rules and needs the embassy stamp. What governs is the date the Vietnamese authority receives the file, not the date the apostille was issued. Conversely, an apostille issued in June is perfectly good for an October submission — apostilles do not expire.
✗ 5. Paying an agent for an embassy step that no longer exists
From 11 September, quotes for “Vietnam embassy legalisation” on documents destined for post-changeover submission are quotes for nothing. Some agents will be slow to update their price lists and their country pages. Check the date, check what you are buying, and if a quote does not distinguish between before and after 11 September, treat that as a warning sign about the rest of the advice.
✗ 6. Translating before apostilling
Covered above, but it earns a place here because it is the most frequent single rejection cause we see across all destinations. The translation must cover the apostille. Apostille first, always.
✗ 7. Ordering only one authenticated copy
Vietnamese authorities frequently retain submitted documents. If you will need the same certificate for a work permit and then again for a TRC, a driving licence conversion or a dependant's application, order two apostilled copies and send them together so you pay for delivery once. At £90 a copy after the changeover, a spare is cheap insurance.
✗ 8. Separating or laminating the finished document
The apostille is attached to your document with a staple and seal, or an eyelet. Removing it breaks the chain of authentication and entitles the receiving authority to reject the document. Laminating makes it impossible to attach anything at all, and is one of the few ways to render a perfectly good certificate permanently unusable.
✗ 9. Confusing Viet Nam with its neighbours
Thailand has not joined the Apostille Convention and there is no announced plan for it to do so. Neither have the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait or Egypt. If your relocation involves more than one country, or if you are moving on from Viet Nam later, check each destination separately — our What Do I Need? tool does it in about thirty seconds per country.
Costs, Timelines & How We Handle Both Routes
Both routes are live products with us today. Our pricing is fixed and inclusive — the FCDO fee is already inside the figures below, and there is no separate handling charge.
From 11 Sept 2026
Apostille — no solicitor
£90
ACRO certificates, GRO / NRS / GRONI certificates, degree certificates, court orders, CNIs. Apostilled the next working day.
Start Your Order →From 11 Sept 2026
Apostille with solicitor
£120
Photocopies, passport copies, employment letters, TEFL certificates, translations, board resolutions, statutory declarations.
Start Your Order →Until 10 Sept 2026
Apostille + embassy
From £150
The full consular chain for a September submission — FCDO apostille plus legalisation at the Embassy of Viet Nam, London.
Start Your Order →⌛ Timelines compared
| Stage | Until 10 Sept 2026 | From 11 Sept 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Solicitor certification (if needed) | 1–2 working days | 1–2 working days |
| FCDO apostille | Next working day | Next working day |
| Vietnamese Embassy legalisation | 1–5 working days | Not required |
| Return delivery | Same day – next day (UK) | Same day – next day (UK) |
| Realistic total, one original document | 5–12 working days | 2–3 working days |
Excludes the time needed to obtain the underlying document — an ACRO certificate at up to 20 working days on the standard service is usually the longest element of any Vietnamese work permit file. Vietnamese translation and notarisation happen in Viet Nam and are additional on both routes.
📦 Delivery options
In-person collection
Free
7th Floor, 50 Broadway, London SW1H 0DB
DHL UK next day
£11.63
Tracked next-day delivery anywhere in the UK
DHL Europe
£40
Tracked express across Europe, 2–4 days
DHL to Viet Nam
£50
Tracked express worldwide, 3–7 days to Hanoi or HCMC
🤝 How we are handling the transition
We have been through this four times in as many years — Saudi Arabia, China, Canada and now Viet Nam — and the operational answer is the same each time. Three things we do for every Vietnamese order between now and the autumn:
- 1. We ask for your submission date before we quote. Not your travel date. If your date falls after 11 September we will not sell you an embassy step you do not need, even if you ask for one — we will tell you why first.
- 2. We hold the embassy stage as a separate decision. Order the apostille now at £90; if you later need the embassy stamp, we add it and you pay the difference. If you do not, you have already finished.
- 3. We re-check the HCCH record. Entry into force dates and objections are matters of public record and we verify them rather than repeating what other agents' websites say. If anything changes before 11 September, this page changes with it.
Every document is checked before it goes to the FCDO — signature, seal, issuing authority, whether solicitor certification is genuinely needed — so it does not come back rejected. We are FCDO-registered, insured to £2 million and have been doing this for over fifteen years. Full pricing is on our pricing page, and the What Do I Need? tool will tell you the current requirement for Viet Nam and 127+ other countries.