Italian citizenship by descent in 2026

What changed in 2025 and why older guides mislead

Until 27 March 2025 Italian citizenship passed down the bloodline with no generational cap. You only had to document an unbroken chain: an ancestor born Italian who had not lost that status before the next link in the family was born. Great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of nineteenth century emigrants were recognised on that basis.

On 28 March 2025 the government issued decree-law 36/2025, and on 23 May parliament converted it into law 74/2025, in force since 24 May 2025. It inserted article 3-bis into citizenship law 91/1992, and the wording is blunt: a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship. The rule reaches back to people born long before the reform. It is not a withdrawal of citizenship going forward, it is a refusal to accept that the citizenship ever came into being.

The cut-off is 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. Anything filed after that moment, court claims included, is judged under the new rules.

The reform was challenged and it held

On 11 March 2026 the Constitutional Court examined a referral from the Tribunal of Turin and, in judgment 63/2026 deposited on 30 April 2026, rejected the challenges to article 3-bis. The legislator has broad discretion over citizenship, there is no constitutional right to unlimited transmission by blood, and retroactive effect is acceptable here. The Court expressly left open the position of applicants who had started the process but never obtained a confirmed appointment before 27 March 2025.

On 23 July 2026 the same Court, by order 147/2026 on referrals from the Tribunals of Mantua and Campobasso, stayed proceedings and asked the Court of Justice of the EU whether article 3-bis is compatible with article 9 TEU and article 20 TFEU, that is with EU citizenship itself. Until Luxembourg answers, article 3-bis remains fully in force. Cases like this take well over a year and the outcome cannot be predicted, so do not build a personal plan around the reform being struck down.

Who still qualifies in 2026

Article 3-bis sets out a closed list of exceptions. One is enough, but it has to be proved with documents rather than family stories.

The key detail under letter c: exclusivity is tested at the date of your birth, or at the ancestor's date of death if they died earlier. The Interior Ministry has instructed offices that the applicant's own statements and sworn declarations are not enough, and that the office must run its own checks on whether the ancestor ever held a second nationality.

Letter d is about sequence: the two years of residence must fall after the parent acquired citizenship and before you were born, not at any point in their life.

The generational cap in practice

Technically the law speaks of degrees of kinship, not generations: a parent is first degree, a grandparent second degree. A great-grandparent is simply not on the list. The harder condition is the second one: the ancestor must have been Italian and nothing else.

The conclusion is uncomfortable but simple. The reform did not cut off grandchildren as a class, it cut off families whose ancestor took a second nationality. In Argentina, Brazil, the USA and Uruguay naturalisation was the norm, because without it people could not work or hold property comfortably. In practice letter c saves a minority of descendants, not the majority.

The chain of transmission: what is checked before article 3-bis

Article 3-bis is an extra filter, not a replacement of the old rules. First you prove the citizenship actually travelled down the chain, then the new conditions are applied. The classic breaks are all still there.

• Naturalisation before the next birth. If the ancestor took a foreign nationality before the next person in the chain was born, nothing passed to that child. The naturalisation date outweighs everything else.
• The 1948 rule. A woman could not transmit citizenship to children born before 1 January 1948. Those cases cannot be handled administratively at all, only in court, and now they run into article 3-bis on top of that.
• Renunciation. A voluntary renunciation by the ancestor breaks the line just as effectively as naturalisation.
• The minor issue. Interior Ministry circular 43347/2024 treated the line as broken where a parent naturalised while the child was still a minor. Courts widely disagreed, and by 2026 case law, including the position of the Court of Cassation, settled in favour of applicants. How your particular consulate or comune applies it is worth checking before you file.
• Record discrepancies. A surname spelled differently, a mismatched date or place of birth is the most common everyday reason for refusal. Fix these through civil status rectification before filing.

Documents, apostilles and translations

The file is built link by link: birth, marriage and death records for every generation from the Italian ancestor down to you, plus the documents that close the article 3-bis conditions.

The apostille is issued by the country that produced the document; Italy, Brazil, Argentina and the USA are all parties to the 1961 Hague Convention, so full consular legalisation is not required. Translations must be sworn or certified by the consulate, an ordinary agency translation will be rejected. Formal requirements differ between consular districts, so check your own consulate's list before ordering archive records.

Where to file, what it costs and how long it takes

If you live abroad, you file with the Italian consulate for your district. If you move to Italy and register residence, you can file with your comune. Consular appointments run through the Prenot@mi portal, and the bottleneck is usually the appointment rather than the decision: in districts with large Italian communities slots disappear within minutes and waits are measured in years.

The consular fee for an adult application is in the region of 600 euro per person and is not refunded if the application is refused. Consular tariffs are periodically adjusted, so confirm the amount at the time you file. A separate 250 euro contribution to the Interior Ministry applies to declarations of acquisition by benefit of law, payable for each minor. On top of that come archive records, apostilles, translations and, on the court route, the court fee and legal work.

There is no Italian language test for recognition by descent: the state confirms a status rather than granting one. B1 Italian is required in a different scenario, namely naturalisation by residence or by marriage.

On timing, plainly: the 6 to 12 months figure belonged to pre-reform practice at some consulates and is misleading today. The realistic cycle runs in years, covering the wait for an appointment, the review itself, transcription of records into Italian registries, AIRE registration and only then the passport. This is not a programme you can plan a relocation date around.

The court route: where it still works

Claims filed by 23:59 on 27 March 2025 are decided under the previous law, which is exactly what letter b says. Anything filed later falls under article 3-bis, so litigation is no longer a way around the reform. It remains useful where the right exists but the administrative door is shut: 1948 cases, consular refusals, inaction beyond a reasonable term, disputes over how the chain is read.

For applicants resident abroad, venue follows the Italian ancestor's place of birth: the case goes to the specialised immigration section of the tribunal for that district. The reform also changed the evidence rules: under the amended article 19-bis of decree 150/2011 the burden of proof sits with the applicant, and oaths and witness testimony are excluded as means of proof. Relatives' recollections will not win a case, documents will.

One extra factor in 2026 is the pending answer from the Court of Justice under order 147/2026. Some proceedings may be stayed until it arrives, adding uncertainty to timelines that already run in years.

If jure sanguinis is closed: what is actually left

First, what has already expired. The transitional window for minors who were children of citizens recognised under letters a, a-bis and b ran until 23:59 on 31 May 2026. Anyone who missed it now follows the ordinary rules of article 4.

• Article 4(1)(c). If a parent or grandparent was an Italian citizen by birth, citizenship can be acquired by declaration: be legally resident in Italy for at least two years by the time you come of age and declare within one year of turning eighteen. It is a narrow window that only fits young people who moved to Italy in advance.
• Article 4(1-bis). For a minor child of a citizen by birth: a parental declaration plus either two years of the child's legal residence in Italy afterwards, or a declaration filed within one year of birth. The contribution is 250 euro per child.
• Article 9(1)(a). For children and grandchildren of citizens by birth, naturalisation by residence was shortened from three years to two. But this is a discretionary concession, not a right: it requires legal residence, income, a clean record and B1 Italian. More distant descendants face the ordinary ten-year term.
• Article 17-ter, reacquisition. Anyone born in Italy, or resident there for at least two continuous years, who lost citizenship under the old rules of law 555/1912 by taking a foreign nationality while living abroad, can reacquire it by declaration. The window is limited: 1 July 2025 to 31 December 2027. It does not cover renunciations made from 16 August 1992 onwards.
• Out-of-quota work entry for descendants. A decree of 17 November 2025 opened work entry outside the annual quotas for descendants of Italians from the seven countries with the largest communities: Argentina, Brazil, the USA, Canada, Australia, Venezuela and Uruguay. It requires a contract with an Italian employer and does not cover self-employment. The country list and conditions are revised, so check the current text before preparing documents.
• Ordinary residence permits. If ancestry does not help, the standard routes remain: Italian residence permits, including elective residence for the financially independent, and the digital nomad visa. Citizenship on those routes comes after ten years of residence.

It is also worth comparing ancestry programmes elsewhere. Where Italy now demands an exclusively Italian ancestor, Romania and several Eastern European countries count generations differently.

What can go wrong and who this does not suit

No sugar-coating here.

• The ancestor turns out to have held a second nationality. This is the most common reason for refusal in 2026. Family memory says the grandfather stayed Italian; the archive record shows a naturalisation in the 1950s. Check this before you collect anything else, not after.
• Kinship beyond grandparents. Great-grandchildren are excluded outright, and no amount of additional evidence of ties to Italy changes that.
• The queue matters more than the entitlement. Even a perfect case runs into consular appointment availability, which depends neither on you nor on your lawyer.
• Costs are sunk. The consular fee is not refunded on refusal, and neither is the money spent on archive records, apostilles and translations. A negative answer at the assessment stage saves several thousand euro.
• Soviet-era records. For descendants of Italians in Crimea, Odesa or Georgia the picture is harder than average: records are often lost or distorted, and ancestors usually already held Soviet citizenship by the time their children were born, which closes letter c.
• Retroactivity. People who considered themselves Italian by blood for decades but never filed have lost the entitlement, and the Constitutional Court found that acceptable.
• Betting on the CJEU. Waiting for article 3-bis to be struck down can take years with no guarantee. It is not a plan.

Who this route does not suit at all: anyone who needs an EU passport within a year; great-grandchildren and more distant descendants; families whose ancestor naturalised abroad before the next birth in the chain; anyone without documentary proof of every link; and anyone unwilling to spend on archives and translations with no guaranteed outcome.

How to start

1. Map the chain from the Italian ancestor to yourself and write down birth, marriage, death and emigration dates for every link.
2. Work out whether you fall under letter c or letter d of article 3-bis. Nothing else matters until that is answered.
3. Order the naturalisation record, or the certificate that none exists, from the country your ancestor emigrated to. It is the slowest and the most decisive document.
4. Check the records for name and date discrepancies and prepare rectifications in advance.
5. Choose the route: the consulate for your district, a comune after moving to Italy, or the court if the administrative door is shut.
6. If article 3-bis excludes you, do not spend a year assembling a file for a refusal. Move to the alternative routes straight away.

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