How to fix the “issue date cannot be later than intended entry date” error on Vietnam’s arrival form

From messages by 6 participants in 3 sources · Last activity: 21 days ago

TL;DR

If Vietnam's arrival card form shows the error "issue date cannot be later than intended entry date", a traveler in September 2026 advised leaving the visa issue-date field blank while filling in the visa expiry date — that worked for her. The error appeared even when the entry date matched the arrival date, and moving the visa start date one day earlier did not help.

What the community said

For the “issue date cannot be later than intended entry date” error, leave the visa issue-date field blank and complete the visa expiry-date field.

22 days ago Visa issue-date field

In September 2026 a traveler arriving on 23 September described the problem: filling in the arrival card, he chose the unilateral visa-exemption option; the form set the visa start date to 23 September by default but still showed the error. Changing the date to 22 September made no difference.

22 days ago Visa exemption: the default date also triggers the error

On the same day, 21 September 2026, another traveler replied that she had hit the same error and solved it by leaving the visa issue-date field blank and filling in the expiry date. So this is the approach to try, rather than cycling through different visa start dates.

22 days ago What worked: blank issue date, expiry date filled in