Moc Bai Expressway 2026
Short answer: not the part of the drive that hurts. The 51 km expressway fixes the approach from Ho Chi Minh City, and your run starts three hours east of that.
Every few months a guest in Ham Tien asks whether they should hold off on their visa run until the new expressway opens. They have read that a highway is coming straight to the Moc Bai border gate and assumed the five hour drive from Mui Ne is about to become three. It is not, and it is worth understanding why before you plan anything around it.
The project is real and it is big. It is also aimed at a different problem: the crawl out of Ho Chi Minh City on National Highway 22. If you want the road you will actually drive on your run day, the Phan Thiet to Moc Bai route guide covers it leg by leg.
Length
51 km
24.7 km inside Ho Chi Minh City, 26.3 km across Tay Ninh province. Ring Road 3 at Phu Hoa Dong out to QL22 at Ben Cau.
Speed
120 km/h
Design speed on a four lane phase one build, with an emergency stopping lane. Six lanes are planned later.
Opening
2028
Main line started 1 July 2026. Substantial completion is targeted for December 2027, full operation in 2028.
The project
The prime minister approved it in August 2024. Ground works started at the end of 2025, and the main line broke ground on 1 July 2026.
The budget does the explaining here. Phase one was approved at 19,617 billion VND. In April 2026 the city council lifted that to 22,975 billion VND, mostly for compensation and resettlement, and pushed the implementation period out to 2028. Roughly 9,674 billion of it is public money and the rest comes from the investor group under a build-operate-transfer deal.
The BOT component everyone means when they say "the Moc Bai expressway". Started 1 July 2026. Tolls pay for it, which matters later in this page.
43.14 km of frontage roads, 16 overpasses and 10 underpasses so local traffic does not have to cross the expressway at grade. The first package started in December 2025.
25.76 of the 26.33 km through the province has been handed to the builders, and 2,208 of 2,273 affected households have been paid. A few hundred metres are still held up.
Cambodia is building its own expressway towards Bavet from Phnom Penh, so the two projects are meant to meet at the border rather than dead-end there.
The honest bit
The expressway starts at Ring Road 3, on the eastern edge of Ho Chi Minh City. Your car joins the corridor at Dau Giay, about 60 km further east again.
So of the roughly 265 km between Ham Tien and the Moc Bai gate, only the last quarter would sit anywhere near the new road. The first stretch, Ham Tien down to Phan Thiet and up the CT.01 expressway to Dau Giay, is unchanged by any of this. That is about 100 km of the drive and, in good conditions, around an hour and forty minutes.
The middle section, Dau Giay junction through the Bien Hoa bypass and onto QL22, is where the day usually wobbles. A stalled container truck around Long Thanh or Tam Phuoc can cost you half an hour on its own. An expressway from Ring Road 3 to Ben Cau does nothing for that, because the congestion sits east of where the new road begins.
Realistic expectations
Nobody can hand you a number yet, and anyone who does is guessing. What we can say is where the saving would come from. Today the tail of the run, from the Dau Giay junction out to the gate, is about 100 km of mixed road. The expressway covers the western half of that and the city approach on top. Expect the gain to be measured in tens of minutes on a good day, not in hours off the total.
There is a second reason not to bank on it: the main line is a build-operate-transfer contract, so it will be a toll road. QL22 stays free and runs roughly parallel. A shared van at 1,400,000 VND a seat has an incentive to stay on the old road, and a private car might pay the toll to get home earlier. Both are reasonable choices, and it means the expressway shortens some runs more than others.
For this season, none of it matters. The drive is what the route guide describes, the prices are what the cost breakdown lists, and the run works the same as it has for years. If your visa expires in October, waiting for a 2028 highway is not a plan.
If you are in Mui Ne long term and thinking about the 2028 season, the useful move is to keep an eye on two things: when the Ben Cau interchange works are finished, and what the toll rate comes out at. Both will decide whether the time saving is worth anything to a car coming from Phan Thiet. Until then we quote the road we drive.
Expressway questions
Not soon, and only partly. The HCMC to Moc Bai expressway runs from Ring Road 3 out to the Ben Cau junction on QL22, so it replaces the city approach and the tail of the QL22 leg. From Mui Ne you still spend about 100 minutes getting to Phan Thiet and up the CT.01 expressway to Dau Giay. The first substantial completion target is December 2027, with full operation in 2028.
About 51 km in total, split into 24.7 km through Ho Chi Minh City and 26.3 km through Tay Ninh province. It starts at the junction with Ring Road 3 in Phu Hoa Dong and ends where it meets National Highway 22 at Km53+934 in Ben Cau, a few kilometres short of the Moc Bai border gate.
The main line under the BOT contract was launched on 1 July 2026. The published plan targets substantial completion in December 2027 and full operation in 2028. The project was approved in August 2024 at VND 19,617 billion, then adjusted in April 2026 to VND 22,975 billion with the implementation period extended to 2028.
Yes. The main line is being built under a build-operate-transfer contract worth VND 10,421 billion, and the investor recovers that through tolls. QL22 stays free and runs roughly parallel, so a driver may still choose the old road for the last stretch into Ben Cau.
No. Mui Ne visa runs work fine today on the CT.01 Phan Thiet to Dau Giay expressway plus QL22, and they take about five hours each way. Waiting until 2028 for a shorter drive makes no sense if your e-visa runs out next month.
Same border, other starting points
From District 1 the Moc Bai gate is about 70 km away, so the new highway genuinely changes that product the moment it opens. If you are in Ho Chi Minh City rather than on the beach, that side of the corridor is handled separately because the road and the pricing are different. Travellers heading down from the highlands use the Da Lat desk, which runs its own routes.
Book a run now
Private car is 4,200,000 VND for the vehicle, a shared seat is 1,400,000 VND per person, both covering the full 265 km loop from Ham Tien or Phan Thiet town to the Moc Bai gate and back the same day.
Ask us anything about timing while you book. If your run date lands near Tet or a Cambodian holiday, we will tell you which morning to take.
Usually answered within the hour. Prefer email? Write to book@muinevisarun.com.
WhatsApp usWhatsApp +83 369 308 237, seven days a week.
Keep planning
The highway is a few years off. The drive, the money and the border paperwork are all happening now.