Vietnam's New Content Decrees: The 3 Checks Your Brand Needs Before Publishing

On July 1, 2026, two new decrees came into force in Vietnam that change how brands can publish online. Decree 237/2026 puts clearer boundaries around press and media work. Decree 174/2026 updates the penalties for how content behaves online — including content published by brands.

If your brand publishes in Vietnam, works with Vietnamese media, or plans to expand there, three things just changed. (We maintain a living guide to Vietnam’s content rules for brands that we update as the rules evolve.) Each one is a check your team now needs to run before content goes live.

Check 1 — Format: does your branded content look like journalism?

Under the new rules, journalism is a licensed activity reserved for authorized press agencies. Content that imitates professional reporting — investigative-style videos, staged reporting, formal interviews with multiple sources drawing conclusions on public issues — can now attract scrutiny as unlicensed journalism.

Brands can still share opinions and expertise. The line is presentation: branded content should read as commentary, expert perspective, or clearly commercial content — not as news.

The check: before a long-form video or creator piece ships, someone has to ask — could a regulator read this as reporting? If yes, reframe it.

Check 2 — Rights: consent, not credit

Decree 174/2026 sets penalties for sharing journalistic, literary, or artistic works online without the rights-holder’s consent. This applies to individuals, brand pages, websites, and managed accounts.

The detail most teams will miss: crediting the source is not the same as having permission. A “source:” line under a reposted article, photo, or clip does not make it legal.

The check: for every piece of third-party material in your content — press clippings, music, artwork, footage — someone has to confirm there is actual permission, not just attribution.

Check 3 — Partnerships: the publisher keeps the pen

Media partnerships remain allowed — brands can still collaborate with Vietnamese outlets on publications, channels, and broadcast content. But the press agency keeps full responsibility for the final content, and commercial partners cannot take editorial control or present themselves as the outlet’s journalists. Press conferences now run on a written-notification system (at least 24 hours before the event) instead of permits.

The check: partnership agreements should say, in writing, that editorial sign-off stays with the publisher, and the commercial relationship should be transparent.

The real problem: nobody can run these checks by hand at scale

One post, one check — easy. But a multi-SKU brand shipping dozens or hundreds of creator posts a month across markets can’t rely on someone remembering to ask the format question, the rights question, and the partnership question every single time. That’s how violations happen: not bad intent, just volume outrunning review.

This is what brand governance means in practice: every draft checked against your brand’s rules — including market rules like these — before it ships, not after a regulator flags it. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen with FDA advisories in the Philippines and BPOM enforcement in Indonesia: the rules keep tightening, and the brands that stay clear are the ones with a review step built into how content moves.

DashoContent keeps beauty and consumer brands audit-ready at creator scale — every post checked against brand and market rules before it goes live. If Vietnam is on your roadmap, the time to add the review step is before your first campaign there, not after.

Sources: Decrees 237/2026/ND-CP and 174/2026/ND-CP, in force July 1, 2026; analysis via regional communications agency Vero (July 17, 2026).