Vietnam's 2025 nationality law: what Law 79/2025/QH15 actually changed

The honest headline

Vietnam changed its nationality law in 2025, and the changes matter for more people than the headlines suggested. On June 24, 2025, the National Assembly passed Law 79/2025/QH15, amending the 2008 Law on Vietnamese Nationality, which had already been amended once in 2014. The amendment took effect a week later, on July 1, 2025, and Decree 191/2025/ND-CP, the implementing regulation, took effect the same day, replacing the old Decree 16/2020/ND-CP.

In one paragraph: the law keeps Vietnam's single-nationality principle but writes real exceptions into it. People with close Vietnamese family ties can now naturalize under lighter conditions and, in many cases, keep their foreign passport. Applications can be filed from abroad through Vietnamese embassies and consulates. The paperwork got simpler, and the process is supposed to move faster. At the same time, the law added new powers to revoke citizenship decisions for false declarations, so the honesty requirement is stricter than ever.

A few dates worth knowing. The law passed on June 24, 2025, took effect July 1, 2025, and the government has two years from that date to review and adjust related regulations. Applications for naturalization, restoration, or renunciation that were already filed before July 1, 2025 are processed under the new rules, so almost nobody is stuck with the old ones.

This page is the plain-language version of the amendment and its decree. It walks through what changed, who it affects, and how it updates the guidance on the rest of this site, which was written against the 2008 law as amended in 2014.

Keeping your foreign passport

The most consequential change in Law 79/2025/QH15 is that keeping your foreign nationality is now a realistic option when you naturalize. Before 2025, naturalizing in Vietnam generally meant renouncing your existing citizenship, which is why so few foreigners ever started the process. The amended law keeps the general rule that Vietnam recognizes one nationality, Vietnamese, but creates exceptions that cover most family-tie applicants.

Under Article 19.6, people who naturalize through the spouse, child, parent, grandparent, merit, or national-interest routes can retain their foreign nationality if three things are true. First, keeping your current citizenship has to be consistent with the law of your home country. That is the one part of the equation Vietnam cannot grant you. Some countries allow dual citizenship freely, some tolerate it, and some require you to give it up. Second, you must not use your foreign nationality to harm the legitimate rights and interests of agencies, organizations, or individuals in Vietnam, or to infringe on national security and interests. Third, the President has to approve the retention, and the request is part of the application, not a box you tick afterward.

The same rules apply to people restoring Vietnamese citizenship. Article 23.5 lets a former citizen regain Vietnamese nationality while keeping the foreign nationality they took on, under the same conditions and the same presidential approval.

One more thing changed quietly. The implementing decree now addresses Vietnamese citizens with dual nationality directly, including how state agencies handle recruiting them. Appointment to state positions is decided case by case, only where it benefits the country. In practice, dual status is treated as the new normal for the people it applies to, not a loophole.

Who gets lighter conditions

The baseline for naturalization has not changed. A foreign national or stateless person can apply if they have full civil capacity, comply with the Constitution and laws of Vietnam, respect Vietnamese culture and customs, know enough Vietnamese to integrate into the community, are living in Vietnam, have held permanent residence for at least five years, and can support themselves.

The 2025 amendment decides which parts of that list get waived, and for whom, and the difference between the two waiver groups matters.

Group one: spouses and biological children of Vietnamese citizens. Under Article 19.2, a foreign spouse or a biological child of a Vietnamese citizen no longer has to meet the Vietnamese language condition or the five-year residence duration. Everything else remains, including the requirement to actually be living in Vietnam with valid residence status when you apply. The common misreading of the 2025 law was that marriage alone let you file from abroad on paper. It does not. The spouse exemption removes the language test and the five-year clock, not the need to live in the country. Livelihood also still has to be shown, though Decree 191 keeps it easy to prove: assets, legal income, or a guarantee from an organization or individual in Vietnam.

Group two: biological parents, paternal grandparents, maternal grandparents, people with special merit, people whose naturalization benefits the state, and minors applying with a parent. Under Article 19.3, these applicants are exempt from the language condition, the residence-in-Vietnam condition, the five-year duration, and the livelihood requirement. That is the full set. This is the route that genuinely can be pursued from abroad, and it is the group the government had in mind when it relaxed the rules to attract overseas talent and family members back.

Whatever conditions are waived, the corresponding documents are waived too. Article 20.2 says applicants exempt from conditions under Article 19 do not have to submit the papers that prove those conditions.

Filing from abroad and the new electronic route

Before 2025, naturalization applications had to be filed in Vietnam, at the provincial Department of Justice where you lived. Article 21.1 of the amended law opens a second door: if you reside abroad, you file through the Vietnamese embassy or consulate in your country of residence. This is the change that makes the family-tie routes usable for people who have never lived in Vietnam.

The embassy route has its own timeline. The mission has 20 days to review the dossier and forward it to the Ministry of Justice with a recommendation, while the Ministry of Public Security verifies your background. The Ministry of Justice then has 20 days to recheck the file. If you are not retaining your foreign nationality, you get a written notice to start renouncing it, and once the renunciation certificate arrives, the Minister of Justice reports through the Prime Minister to the President, who makes the final decision. If you are keeping your foreign nationality, or you are stateless, the file skips the renunciation step and goes straight up. Either way, the decision belongs to the President, and the paperwork path is now identical whether you file in Vietnam or abroad.

There is one deadline in that chain that catches people out. If renunciation proof is required and you do not submit it within nine months, the application is withdrawn and returned. The nine months do not count toward the official processing time, so a slow home-country bureaucracy can quietly kill a file.

Decree 191 also pushes the process onto the National Public Service Portal. Restoration, renunciation, confirmation of nationality, and the certificate of Vietnamese origin can all be filed online through the portal under the one-stop mechanism, with fees paid through integrated e-payment and results delivered by email, post, or pickup. In practice, applicants still assemble the same paper dossier, but the submission and tracking now happen digitally for the procedures the portal supports.

Restoration opened up

Restoration is the route for people who once held Vietnamese nationality, lost it, and want it back. Before the 2025 amendment, only certain categories of former citizens could apply, which left a lot of people outside the door for reasons that had little to do with their actual ties to Vietnam.

Article 23.1 now reads differently. Any person who lost Vietnamese nationality under the grounds listed in Article 26 of the law can submit an application for restoration and have it considered. The category restrictions are gone, and the intent is explicit: the state wants former citizens back. This matters for overseas Vietnamese who renounced nationality years ago, often under family pressure or for practical reasons, and now want to return.

Two details shape the restoration file. First, the name rule applies here with extra force. Under Article 23.4, a restored citizen must take back their former Vietnamese name. If they are also retaining their foreign nationality, they can choose a combined name that joins the Vietnamese name and the foreign name, and whichever name is chosen goes into the decision approving restoration. Second, the dual nationality retention rules from Article 23.5 apply in full, so former citizens can regain Vietnamese nationality while keeping the passport they picked up in the meantime, subject to their home country's rules and presidential approval.

Restoration is not the same as naturalization. It has its own dossier, its own fee schedule, and its own verification chain, but the amended law deliberately pulled the two procedures closer together. The descent and origin pages on this site cover the recognition routes for overseas Vietnamese; restoration is the one for former citizens, and under the 2025 law it is wider than it has ever been.

The name rule

Naturalization in Vietnam comes with a naming rule that surprises most applicants, and the 2025 law states it more clearly than the old text did. Under Article 19.4, a person granted Vietnamese citizenship must adopt a name in Vietnamese or in another language of a recognized Vietnamese ethnic group. You do not get to keep your foreign name as your Vietnamese name, at least not on its own.

There is a practical exception built into the same provision. If you are also requesting to retain your foreign nationality, you may choose a combined name that joins a Vietnamese name with your foreign name. That combined name is recorded in the decision granting citizenship, and it becomes the name on your Vietnamese documents. Someone who keeps their foreign passport can carry both names forward; someone who does not retain foreign nationality takes the Vietnamese name outright.

The rule matters beyond the ceremony. The name in the decision is the name used on the citizenship certificate, the Vietnamese passport, and the national ID. That is why the decision document deserves a careful read before it is finalized, because changing a name later means changing every Vietnamese document that follows. It also affects foreign documents, since your home country's records still carry your old name and the link between the two identities is the decision itself.

Restoration has the mirror-image rule. Article 23.4 requires a restored citizen to take back their former Vietnamese name, with the same combined-name option if they are retaining foreign nationality. In both directions, the law treats the name as part of the identity being restored or created, not as a detail.

The practical advice is to decide the name before the file goes in, state it clearly in the application, and check it when the decision comes back. Names are one of the few things in this process you control completely. The Vietnamese name rule page goes deeper: what counts as a Vietnamese name, how the combined-name option works in practice, and how the choice flows into your passport and ID.

Simpler paperwork, stricter honesty

The 2025 law cut real friction out of the dossier, and it added a serious new power on the other side. Both parts are worth understanding before you file.

On the paperwork side, the biggest change is the criminal record certificate. The amended Article 20.1 requires a certificate issued by the competent authority of the foreign country where you lived, covering your time abroad, and it must have been issued no more than 90 days before you file. That freshness rule quietly controls your whole schedule, because a clearance that expires while you wait on another document means ordering it again. The requirement for a criminal record certificate issued by a Vietnamese authority, which used to be part of the naturalization, restoration, and renunciation dossiers, was abolished. Documents that prove waived conditions are not required at all, under Article 20.2. The decree also accepts certified copies, photocopies compared with originals, and electronic documents, including documents shown through the VNeID app, so the file is easier to assemble than it was in 2024.

On the honesty side, the law added a whole new section on cancelling citizenship decisions. Articles 33 and 34 let the state revoke a decision granting or restoring citizenship when the applicant deliberately made false declarations, forged documents, or exploited naturalization or the retention of foreign nationality to harm Vietnam's interests. The chain moves fast once triggered: 15 days for the provincial committee or mission to verify, 15 days for the Ministry of Justice to review the recommendation, 20 days for the President to decide. Two protections sit alongside it: revoking one spouse's decision does not change the other spouse's nationality, and minor children's nationality is untouched when a parent is stripped or revoked. The three grounds on which nationality ends, and what each one requires, are set out in deprivation, renunciation and annulment.

The message for applicants is simple. Get the documents right, tell the truth, and keep a clean file. The new law rewards honest, well-prepared applications and gives the authorities sharper tools for the ones that are not. The citizenship FAQ answers the 2025-law questions readers send most often, including whether a decision can be taken back.

What it means for Viet Kieu

For overseas Vietnamese, the 2025 law mostly confirms and clarifies what the 2008 and 2014 texts already did, with one important addition. Article 13.2 states that Vietnamese residing abroad who had not lost their nationality before July 1, 2025 still hold it, and if they have no documents proving it, they can ask a Vietnamese embassy or consulate to confirm their nationality. That confirmation route is now written into the law, with the government setting the procedure, and it gives Viet Kieu a clean way to establish a status they may have assumed they lost.

The decree also keeps the certificate of Vietnamese origin (giay xac nhan la nguoi goc Viet Nam) working as before, issued by the provincial Department of Justice or a Vietnamese mission abroad. It is the document many overseas Vietnamese use to invest in Vietnam under conditions close to those of locals, and it is not citizenship. The certificate of origin page on this site explains the difference.

A note on this site's older pages. Most of them were written against the 2008 law as amended in 2014, which is still the foundation, but they now need to be read with the 2025 amendments in mind. The main updates: spouses and children of Vietnamese citizens can skip the language test and the five-year residence clock, people with Vietnamese parents or grandparents can naturalize without living in Vietnam, applications can be filed from abroad through embassies and consulates, keeping your foreign nationality is possible with presidential approval, and the criminal record rules changed. The marriage and citizenship page was written against the 2025 law, and this page is the reference point for the rest.

If you filed before 1 July 2025: which rules decide your file

Most countries write transitional rules to protect people who filed under the old regime. Vietnam did the opposite. Article 3 of Law 79/2025/QH15 says that applications for naturalization, restoration or renunciation of Vietnamese nationality received before the law took effect are decided under the law itself. The effective date was 1 July 2025. If your dossier was already on a desk that morning, the amended text is the one that governs it, not the version you filed against.

That is unusual enough to be worth reading twice, because the same government had done the reverse six months earlier. Decree 07/2025/ND-CP, in force from 9 January 2025, told agencies to keep resolving pending civil status, nationality and certification files under the old decrees. Then the National Assembly passed Law 79/2025/QH15 and wrote the opposite rule for nationality files. Anyone who filed a nationality dossier in the first half of 2025 was, in effect, told to sit tight: the standards were about to change in their favour.

The article names three procedures, and the list is exact: nhap quoc tich (naturalization), tro lai quoc tich (restoration) and thoi quoc tich (renunciation). Those are the three an applicant could already have filed before the amendment, so those are the three the transitional rule reaches. Confirmation of Vietnamese nationality and the certificate of Vietnamese origin are missing from it because neither existed as a filing route before 1 July 2025. The first was written into the law by the same amendment, in Article 13.2. Nothing was pending for them.

It also does not reopen anything that is closed. A decision issued in 2019, a renunciation granted in 2021, a file that was withdrawn and returned to the applicant: Article 3 speaks about files received and not yet resolved, and it has no retroactive effect on outcomes already reached. If your file was finished under the old law, the old law's result stands.

In practice, the amendment changes what a stalled file is measured against. A foreign spouse or the biological child of a Vietnamese citizen who filed in 2024 no longer has to show Vietnamese language ability or the five years of permanent residence, because Article 19.2 of the amended law drops both conditions for that group, and the marriage and citizenship page works through the spouse case in detail. The spouse still has to be living in Vietnam with valid residence status, and that part did not move. Applicants who filed through a Vietnamese parent or grandparent are in a stronger position again: Article 19.3 removes the requirement to be resident in Vietnam at all, so a file that had gone quiet because the applicant never lived here can now be decided on the other conditions.

The other change is the retention request. Before 2025, naturalizing in Vietnam generally meant giving up your existing citizenship, and dossiers were built around that assumption, with a renunciation certificate to be obtained somewhere in the middle. Article 19.6 now lets family-tie applicants keep the foreign nationality with the President's approval, and the retention timeline page covers the older files that turn on what happened before July 2009. If your pending file was framed as renounce-then-naturalize and you would rather keep both passports, the request is made inside the application instead of after it. Put it in writing to the office holding your file, early, rather than raising it once the paper is already moving up the chain.

For all that, the mechanics of a pending file barely move. You do not refile. A dossier received at a provincial Department of Justice stays with that office, and the new right to file through an embassy or consulate, written into Article 21.1, is for files that have not been submitted yet. Someone who filed in Ho Chi Minh City in March 2025 and then moved to Toronto does not get to restart the process at a consulate. The official fee is the same Circular 281/2016 schedule the file was quoted under: 3,000,000 VND for naturalization, 2,500,000 VND for restoration or renunciation.

On documents, the amendment cuts both ways. Papers that prove a condition you are now exempt from are no longer required under Article 20.2, and the Vietnamese police clearance that used to sit in the dossier was abolished. The foreign criminal record certificate stays, and there the calendar is unkind. Article 20.1(d) wants one issued no more than 90 days before filing. A clearance ordered in 2024 no longer looks current to an officer reviewing the file in 2026, so expect to be asked for a fresh one before the review closes.

One deadline matters more than the rest. If the Ministry of Justice notified you to renounce a foreign nationality and the proof did not arrive within nine months, the application is treated as withdrawn and returned to you. Article 3 of the amended law does not restart that clock or revive the file, because a returned application is not a pending one any more. That family is looking at a new filing, this time against the amended conditions, and the odds are usually better than the ones they filed under.

Nothing here happens by itself either. The transitional article settles which rules apply, not how fast anyone works. The file still ends in a presidential decision, and files do sit. If months have passed without word, write to the receiving office and ask for the file reference number and its current stage. A dated, specific question is what moves a file that the transition rule has already put in a stronger position.

Common questions about the 2025 nationality law