What works for Vietnam today
Vietnam has signed up to the Hague Apostille Convention, and that has not yet changed the desks you deal with. The treaty enters into force there on 11 September 2026. Before that day an apostille is not yet accepted for Vietnam, and document legalisation for Vietnam runs through the consular route: an Italian stamp first, then the stamp of Vietnam's mission in Italy.
So this page reads as two pages in one. Half of it is the route you use now, and half is the shorter route that opens on 11 September 2026. Both start at the same Italian desk, so the work you do this year is not wasted when the switch comes.
The 11 September 2026 switch
From 11 September 2026 an apostille from Italy to Vietnam replaces the consular stamp. One certificate, issued in Italy, is then read straight off the page in Vietnam. The apostille requirements for Vietnam will be the plain Italian ones: the right desk for the kind of paper, the tax stamp, and a signature the desk can match against its own register.
The Genoa to Vietnam route step by step
Start with the paper itself, not with a form. A record from a town hall, a register office or a state school is a public one, and it belongs to the Prefettura, the state's office in the province. A deed drawn up by a notary, or a paper issued by a court, belongs to the Procura della Repubblica, the prosecutor's office at the courthouse.
The desk compares the signature on your paper with the one it holds on file. It then adds its own stamp and the €16 tax stamp. With that done the file is ready for the mission that speaks for Vietnam, which puts the last stamp on the bundle before it comes back to you.
Cost, papers and timing
The Italian side has a published price: €16 per document as a tax stamp, with some kinds of paper exempt. The mission sets its own fee, so leave room for an official fee at that stage too. Each paper counts on its own, which is why a family file of four records carries the stamp four times over.
Timing moves with the desk and with the season, so no single figure holds for every file. What you can fix is the order and the shape of the bundle: the Italian stamp before the consular one, originals rather than loose copies, and every paper sent together instead of one at a time.