Vietnam

French presence

The French community in Viet Nam consisted of 6,968 nationals on the consular register in 2025. France has a Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City.

Visits

In 2023, France and Viet Nam celebrated the double anniversary of 50 years of diplomatic relations and 10 years of our strategic partnership, launched by the visit of the President of the French Senate, Gérard Larcher, on 8 December 2022.

The Vietnamese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bùi Thanh Sơn, visited France in June 2023 and met with his counterpart, Catherine Colonna. On 20 October 2023, the President of the French Republic had a telephone conversation with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, Nguyễn Phú Trọng.

The year 2024 was marked by the visit to Viet Nam by the Minister for the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, and the Minister of State for Veterans and Remembrance, invited by the Vietnamese authorities to take part in the commemoration of the 70^th anniversary of the battle of Dien Bien Phu (7 May 2024) and the visit to France by Tô Lâm, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam and temporarily President of Viet Nam, from 4 to 7 October.

In 2025, the Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and French Nationals Abroad made a visit to Viet Nam as part of a trip to Southeast Asia (12 April).
Bilateral relations have been marked, over the long term, by four French presidential visits to Viet Nam (in 1993, 1997, 2004 and 2016), visits by the French Prime Minister in 2009 and 2018, visits to France by the President of Viet Nam in 2002, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam in 2005 and 2018 and the Vietnamese Prime Minister in 2007, 2013, 2015 and 2021. Tô Lâm, at the time President of Viet Nam and General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam, visited France in October 2024.

Academic, scientific and technical cooperation

French cooperation in Viet Nam particularly flourished in the 1990s and 2000s, as France was one of the first countries to step forward after Viet Nam’s opening up to the world and dedicate substantial resources to its transformation (supporting Francophonie with some 60 bilingual classes in Vietnamese schools, legal cooperation through the Maison du Droit, higher education with three French-Vietnamese university campuses, and health through training for doctors in France). Since then, Viet Nam has achieved rapid development and gained numerous partners.

Today, our cooperation continues to be characterized by investment in a wide variety of fields, from the cultural, educational and linguistic, audiovisual and academic fields to science, health, governance and decentralized cooperation. The large number of French agencies present in Viet Nam (AFD, IRD, CIRAD, French School of Asian Studies – EFEO, Institut Français, Expertise France, French Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis – ANRS) represents a major asset for driving our cooperation forward and orienting it towards key sectors for the future, such as the ecological transition, innovation and research, digital technology and governance, social protection, tourism and heritage, and cultural and creative industries.
The education sector is an important part of our relationship. After the pandemic, France has sought to once again attract large inflows of Vietnamese students. The leading institutions in our academic cooperation, such as the Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) and the French Vietnamese School of Management (CFVG), are strengthening their model.