Consider the spatially inhomogeneous Landau equation with moderately soft potentials (i.e. with $$\gamma \in (-\,2,0)$$ γ∈(-2,0) ) on the whole space $${\mathbb {R}}^3$$ R3 . We prove that if the initial data $$f_{\mathrm {in}}$$ fin are close to the vacuum solution $$f_{\mathrm {vac}} \equiv 0$$ fvac≡0 in an appropriate norm, then the solution f remains regular globally in time. This is the first stability of vacuum result for a binary collisional model featuring a long-range interaction. Moreover, we prove that the solutions in the near-vacuum regime approach solutions to the linear transport equation as $$t\rightarrow +\,\infty $$ t→+∞ . Furthermore, in general, solutions do not approach a traveling global Maxwellian as $$t \rightarrow +\,\infty $$ t→+∞ . Our proof relies on robust decay estimates captured using weighted energy estimates and the maximum principle for weighted quantities. Importantly, we also make use of a null structure in the nonlinearity of the Landau equation which suppresses the most slowly-decaying interactions.