Italian Citizenship by Descent
Italian citizenship by descent — jure sanguinis, by right of blood — is the recognition that you have been an Italian citizen since birth because an Italian ancestor transmitted citizenship down your family line without interruption. It is not granted: it is declared. Since 28 March 2025 the law limits who can obtain that declaration, and this page explains exactly how, with the text of the law and the decisions that interpret it.
Verified against the primary sources on 12 September 2026 · Law 91/1992 as amended by Law 74/2025 · Constitutional Court 63/2026 and ord. 147/2026 · Cassation SS.UU. 24045/2026 · Ministry of the Interior circulars 26185/2025 and 65050/2026
Filed after the new law, won in court: a real case, explained by the lawyer who argued it.
What changed on 28 March 2025, and what did not
Decree-Law no. 36 of 28 March 2025, converted with amendments by Law no. 74 of 23 May 2025, inserted a new article 3-bis into the citizenship law (Law no. 91 of 5 February 1992). It is the first generational limit in the history of Italian citizenship law: before it, as the Constitutional Court put it in judgment 63/2026, “transmission to descendants occurred without time limits”.
Anyone descended from an Italian citizen through an unbroken line was already a citizen, however many generations back the ancestor was, provided no one in the line lost citizenship before the next birth. The status is permanent and cannot be lost by the passing of time (Cassation, Sezioni Unite, 25317 and 25318 of 2022).
A person born abroad who holds another citizenship is deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship — unless one of five conditions in article 3-bis applies. Three of them protect people who started before the cut-off; two of them are permanent rules about the parent or grandparent.
“È considerato non avere mai acquistato la cittadinanza italiana chi è nato all’estero anche prima della data di entrata in vigore del presente articolo ed è in possesso di altra cittadinanza, salvo che ricorra una delle seguenti condizioni” — a person born abroad, even before this article entered into force, who holds another citizenship, is deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of the following conditions applies.
Two things the text does not say, because they are the two errors we read most often: it does not require a parent or grandparent born in Italy (that condition was in the original decree and was removed during conversion), and it does not introduce any language test for descent.
Who qualifies: the five conditions, one by one
This is the text of article 3-bis, condition by condition, with what each one means in practice according to the Ministry of the Interior’s circular of 28 May 2025 and the courts. The first three are about timing; the last two are about your parent or grandparent.
You applied before the cut-off
An application, with the required documents, was filed at the consulate or the mayor no later than 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025.
Decided under the rules in force on 27 March 2025. Only formal gaps (a missing translation, for instance) may be completed afterwards, according to Ministry of the Interior circular no. 26185 of 28 May 2025.
You had an appointment communicated before the cut-off
The application is filed on the date of an appointment that the competent office communicated to you no later than 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025.
The law says “appointment communicated by the office”. A booking request you made, with no date assigned by the consulate, is not the same thing — and the Constitutional Court has expressly left that situation open (judgment no. 63/2026, § 9.1).
You filed in court before the cut-off
A judicial application was filed no later than 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025.
The Sezioni Unite of the Court of Cassation confirmed in judgment no. 24045/2026 that article 3-bis does not apply to court cases filed before that date.
A parent or grandparent holds only Italian citizenship
A first- or second-degree ascendant “holds, or held at the time of death, exclusively Italian citizenship”.
The law does not require that parent or grandparent to have been born in Italy. The circular of 28 May 2025 assesses the condition at the date of your birth (or at the ascendant’s death, if earlier) and asks for documentary proof — certificates that no other citizenship was held, no renunciation, no registration on foreign electoral rolls. A statement by the family is not enough.
A parent lived in Italy for two years before you were born
A parent or adoptive parent resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before your birth or adoption.
Proved with a historical residence certificate issued by the Italian municipality.
Consulate, municipality or court
Recognition can be requested from three authorities. They apply the same law, but with very different capacity, cost and timing — and only one of them decides the questions the law left unresolved.
Consulate
- Fee of €600 per adult applicant since 1 January 2025, not refundable, whatever the outcome.
- Since Law no. 11 of 19 January 2026 each consulate accepts, per year, no more applications from adults than the procedures it closed the year before — and never fewer than one hundred. The legal term to decide is thirty-six months.
- From 1 January 2029 adult applications from abroad will no longer be handled by consulates at all: they will be sent by post to a central office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- No consulate publishes its waiting times, and we do not invent them.
Municipality
- You must establish legal residence in an Italian municipality and remain there while the file is examined.
- Municipalities may charge a contribution for the application; amounts vary and are set locally.
- For most families living abroad this route is impractical: it means relocating for an open-ended period. We rarely recommend it.
Court
- Filed by a lawyer under a power of attorney: you do not travel to Italy.
- For applicants residing abroad the competent court is the tribunal with the specialised immigration section for the district where your Italian father, mother or ancestor was born (Decree-Law 13/2017, art. 4(5), for proceedings started from 22 June 2022).
- Since March 2025 the law states that you must allege and prove that no cause of non-acquisition or loss applies, and that witnesses and oaths are not admitted (Legislative Decree 150/2011, art. 19-bis, paras. 2-bis and 2-ter). The file is decided on documents.
- The court route is also where the questions the law left open are being decided — see below.
Why the court route exists
An application to a consulate is a request to the administration. A lawsuit is a request to a judge to declare a status you already hold. The Italian courts have for years accepted that a citizen who cannot obtain an appointment within a reasonable time may ask the tribunal directly — the “consular delay” line of cases, which we track on a dedicated page with the decisions and what each court required as proof.
Since March 2025 the rules of the lawsuit have changed too. Article 19-bis of Legislative Decree 150/2011 now says, in paragraph 2-ter, that the person seeking recognition “is required to allege and prove the absence of the causes of non-acquisition or loss of citizenship provided by law”, and in paragraph 2-bis that witnesses and oaths are not admitted. A case is won on documents, prepared before filing, not on argument at the hearing.
The “minor issue”: what the Sezioni Unite decided
The most common reason for a refusal between 2023 and 2026 was not the new law. It was an old one: articles 7 and 12 of Law 555/1912, and whether a child who was a minor when the Italian parent naturalised abroad had lost citizenship.
On 26 July 2026 the Sezioni Unite of the Court of Cassation published judgment no. 24045/2026 and settled the question. The principles: under article 7 of Law 555/1912, a child who held two citizenships from birth — Italian by descent and another by birth abroad — keeps Italian citizenship even if the parent later naturalised or lost it, unless the child renounced it as an adult. Article 12(2), the provision on which the refusals were based, concerns only a minor who held Italian citizenship alone. And the equal treatment of mother and father established by the Constitutional Court in 1975 and 1983 extends to the consequences of loss.
The same judgment confirmed that article 3-bis does not apply to court cases filed before 27 March 2025.
The Ministry of the Interior followed on 10 August 2026 with circular no. 65050, published on 26 August, instructing prefectures and consulates to apply the new reading and to re-examine denials issued on the old one. If your application was refused on the minor issue, that refusal is no longer the last word: it can be reopened administratively, or brought before the court.
What has to be proved, and how
A citizenship by descent file is a chain of civil-status records plus proof that the chain was never broken. Since 2025 the law says expressly that the second part is your burden. These are the four things every file must establish.
The chain of birth, marriage and death records
From the Italian-born ancestor down to you, each generation: birth, marriage and, where relevant, death certificates. Italian records from the comune; foreign records apostilled and translated.
Proof the ancestor did not naturalise before the next birth
A naturalisation record, or a certificate that none exists (in the United States, the USCIS certificate of non-existence). This is the document most often missing and most often decisive.
Proof that no cause of loss applies
Since March 2025 the law puts this burden expressly on the applicant (art. 19-bis, para. 2-ter). It is not enough to assert it: it has to be documented, record by record.
Consistency of names and dates
A grandfather who is “Giuseppe” in Italy and “Joseph” in America is the ordinary case, and it is handled by evidence. Unexplained discrepancies are where files stall.
The Sezioni Unite held in 2022 (judgments 25317 and 25318) that the applicant must prove descent and that no interruption occurred, and that it is for the Ministry, if it contests, to prove a specific cause of loss. The 2025 amendment to article 19-bis wrote the applicant’s burden into the statute. Read together: bring the proof, do not rely on the absence of an objection.
Your minor children, and relatives who lost citizenship
Minor children
A child born abroad who holds another citizenship is, under article 3-bis, not a citizen by birth. Article 4(1-bis) of Law 91/1992 gives the parents a way in: a declaration of intent to acquire citizenship, effective if it is filed within three years of the child’s birth (the term was one year until 31 December 2025; Law 199/2025 extended it), or if the child then resides legally in Italy for two continuous years. For children who were minors on 24 May 2025 and whose parent qualifies under conditions (a), (a-bis) or (b), a transitional deadline applies to the declaration: originally 31 May 2026, extended to 31 May 2029 by Law 26/2026. The three-year declaration is exempt from the €250 contribution. Once of age, the child may renounce if they hold another citizenship.
Reacquisition for those who lost citizenship under the 1912 law
Article 17(1) of Law 91/1992, as rewritten by Law 74/2025, opens a window: a person born in Italy, or who lived there for at least two continuous years, and who lost citizenship under articles 8(1), 8(2) or 12 of Law 555/1912, reacquires it by a declaration made between 1 July 2025 and 31 December 2027. The consular fee for that declaration is €250. It is a narrow provision — it does not help descendants born abroad — but for an elderly relative born in Italy it can be decisive for the whole family.
What is still being decided
Most pages on this subject tell you the law is settled. It is not, and pretending otherwise would cost you a decision you might be entitled to. Three things are open as of 12 September 2026.
The Court of Justice of the European Union
With order no. 147/2026 (decided 9 June, published 23 July 2026) the Constitutional Court asked the Court of Justice whether articles 9 TEU and 20 TFEU preclude article 3-bis insofar as it treats people born abroad before the law entered into force as never having acquired citizenship. The Court suspended the proceedings before it while Luxembourg answers. Until it does, article 3-bis stands — but its compatibility with EU law is formally in question.
Those who started without receiving an appointment
Judgment 63/2026 upheld the two-generation limit and expressly left open “the question of the differentiation between those who received an appointment and those who initiated the procedure but did not receive one”. Whether a documented attempt to apply before 27 March 2025, without an appointment being communicated, is enough is being argued case by case before the tribunals.
Parliament
Further bills on citizenship are before Parliament. None has become law as of the date above; article 3-bis and article 5 (citizenship by marriage) read today exactly as quoted on this site. We update this page when that changes, and we date the update.
What we do on a descent file, and what we do not
We are an Italian law firm, admitted in Italy, and citizenship by descent is the largest part of our practice: recognition applications, court cases before tribunals across the country, appeals, and the constitutional and European arguments described above. We read the decisions ourselves, we keep a public register of them, and we publish what we find including when a court disagrees with us.
We do not promise outcomes, we do not quote consular waiting times that no consulate publishes, and we do not take a file we think will fail: if your line does not qualify under the law as it stands and none of the open questions helps you, we will tell you so in the first reply.
Fees for the recognition file, the court case and the appeal are published on the cost page, together with the state charges.
The 2025 law and the minor issue, explained on video
We publish a video every time something changes — a ruling, a circular, a case we have won. These are the three that matter most for descent right now.
Italian Citizenship by Descent: How We Won in Court Under the New Law (2026)
A real case filed after Law 74/2025 and won in court: how the file was built and what the judge decided.
“MINOR ISSUE” IS OVER: Italy’s Supreme Court Landmark Ruling Explained (Sent. 24045/2026)
The Sezioni Unite ruling 24045/2026 on the minor issue, explained: what it decided and who it reopens the path for.
Tajani Decree DEFEATED? New 2026 Rulings on Italian Citizenship by Descent
Two tribunals ruled against the new restrictions on jure sanguinis citizenship: what the 2026 decisions mean for applicants.
More than a hundred videos on Italian citizenship, visas and living in Italy on our YouTube channel.
Frequently asked questions
Is there still Italian citizenship by descent after the 2025 law?
Yes. Law 74/2025 did not abolish citizenship by descent; it introduced a two-generation limit for people born abroad who hold another citizenship, with five exceptions written into article 3-bis. Whether you qualify depends on which exception you fall under, and on whether your family started the procedure before 27 March 2025.
Does my Italian parent or grandparent need to have been born in Italy?
Not under the law as converted. The version of the decree first published on 28 March 2025 required a parent born in Italy; Parliament replaced that condition during conversion. What article 3-bis(c) requires today is that a parent or grandparent holds, or held at death, exclusively Italian citizenship — wherever they were born.
I booked an appointment on Prenot@mi before 27 March 2025. Am I safe?
It depends on what you received. Article 3-bis(a-bis) protects applications filed on the date of an appointment communicated by the office by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. A request you submitted, with no date assigned by the consulate, is a different situation, and the Constitutional Court expressly left it open in judgment 63/2026. It is one of the questions being argued in court now.
What is the “minor issue”, and is it still a problem?
For years some consulates and courts held that a child who was a minor when the Italian parent naturalised abroad had lost Italian citizenship under article 12 of Law 555/1912. On 26 July 2026 the Sezioni Unite of the Court of Cassation (judgment no. 24045/2026) held the opposite: under article 7 of that law, a child who held two citizenships from birth keeps the Italian one even if the parent naturalised, unless the child renounced it as an adult. Article 12(2) concerns only a minor who held Italian citizenship alone. The Ministry of the Interior then instructed consulates and prefectures, with circular no. 65050 of 10 August 2026, to re-examine denials issued on the old reading.
Is there a B1 Italian language requirement for citizenship by descent?
No. The B1 requirement in article 9.1 of Law 91/1992 applies to citizenship by marriage and by naturalisation (articles 5 and 9). Neither Decree-Law 36/2025, nor Law 74/2025, nor Law 11/2026 introduced a language test for recognition by descent.
Can I keep my current citizenship?
Italy allows it. Article 11 of Law 91/1992 provides that a citizen who holds, acquires or reacquires a foreign citizenship keeps the Italian one. On the other side, the US State Department states that “U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another”, and that acquiring a foreign nationality does not by itself cause loss of US nationality. Other countries have their own rules, and we check them case by case.
My line passes through a woman who had her child before 1948. Does that still work?
Yes, through the courts. Under Law 555/1912 an Italian woman could not transmit citizenship to a child born before 1 January 1948, and lost it on marrying a foreigner. The Constitutional Court struck those rules down in judgments 87/1975 and 30/1983, and the Sezioni Unite (judgment 4466/2009) held that citizenship must be recognised judicially in those cases. Law 74/2025 did not change this. We handle it on a dedicated page.
How long does it take?
For consulates, no official waiting time is published and we do not quote one; the legal term to decide, once the file is accepted, is thirty-six months. For court cases the time depends on the tribunal: our register of decisions shows, court by court, when cases were filed and decided.
What does it cost?
The state charges €600 per adult at the consulate, not refundable. Court cases carry the court filing fee and the lawyer’s fee. Our published fees and the state charges are on the cost page.
Can my minor children be included?
Children of a person recognised as a citizen by birth can become citizens by a declaration of the parents under article 4(1-bis) of Law 91/1992: within three years of birth, or after two continuous years of legal residence in Italy. For children who were minors on 24 May 2025 and whose parent qualifies under exceptions (a), (a-bis) or (b), the deadline for the declaration has been extended to 31 May 2029 by Law 26/2026. That declaration, when made within the three-year window, is exempt from the €250 contribution.
What this page is based on
Every statement of law above was checked against the text below on 12 September 2026. Where a figure could not be confirmed from a primary source — consular waiting times, court filing fees for this type of case — we have left it out rather than repeat what others publish.
- Law no. 91 of 5 February 1992, articles 1, 3-bis, 4, 9-bis, 11 and 17, consolidated text (normattiva.it).
- Decree-Law no. 36 of 28 March 2025, converted with amendments by Law no. 74 of 23 May 2025, including article 1(1-ter) on minors.
- Law no. 199 of 30 December 2025, article 1(513) (three-year declaration for minors); Decree-Law no. 200 of 31 December 2025, article 19-ter, converted by Law no. 26 of 27 February 2026 (deadline of 31 May 2029).
- Law no. 11 of 19 January 2026, article 1, replacing article 10 of Legislative Decree 71/2011 (consular caps, thirty-six-month term, centralisation from 1 January 2029).
- Law no. 207 of 30 December 2024 (consular fee of €600 from 1 January 2025), as applied by the consular offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
- Legislative Decree no. 150 of 1 September 2011, article 19-bis; Decree-Law no. 13 of 17 February 2017, article 4(5), as amended by Law no. 206 of 26 November 2021.
- Constitutional Court, judgment no. 63/2026 and order no. 147/2026; judgments no. 87/1975 and no. 30/1983.
- Court of Cassation, Sezioni Unite, judgment no. 24045/2026 (published 26 July 2026); judgments no. 25317 and 25318/2022; judgment no. 4466/2009.
- Ministry of the Interior, circulars no. 26185 of 28 May 2025, no. 889 of 8 January 2026, no. 19951 of 12 March 2026 and no. 65050 of 10 August 2026.
- US Department of State, “Dual Nationality”, travel.state.gov.
Send us your line. We will tell you where you stand.
Who was born in Italy, who was born where and when, and whether anyone naturalised and when. That is enough for a first answer: which condition of article 3-bis applies to you, whether the consulate or the court is realistic, and what the file will need. If the honest answer is that it will not work, you will get that answer too.
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Maternal line before 1948? See the 1948 case. Married to an Italian citizen? See citizenship by marriage.
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