For decades, Italian citizenship by descent worked on a principle that startled people the first time they heard it: there was no generational limit. If you could document an unbroken chain back to an Italian ancestor, and no link in that chain had naturalised elsewhere before passing citizenship on, you had a claim — great-great-grandparents included.
That is over. Italy changed the law in 2025, and in 2026 the Constitutional Court upheld the change. The eligible pool went from tens of millions worldwide to a small fraction of that. This page explains what the rules are now, honestly, including for the many people whose answer is now no.
This is general information, not legal advice. Nobody writing on the internet — including us — can tell you whether you personally qualify. Citizenship cases turn on specific dates, specific documents and, increasingly, on transitional provisions that are still being litigated. If your case matters to you, consult an Italian citizenship lawyer. Rules also continue to evolve; the position described here is as at August 2026.
What changed
Law 74/2025 ended automatic transmission of citizenship to people born abroad who already held another citizenship at birth. In practice this replaced an unlimited generational chain with a rule centred on close relatives, plus a requirement to show a real connection to Italy rather than a purely documentary one.
Legal challenges followed immediately, arguing the change was unconstitutional and unfair to people mid-process. In 2026 the Constitutional Court upheld the reform. It did not abolish citizenship by descent, and it left some transitional questions open — particularly around people who had started the process but had not secured an appointment before the cutoff.
Who still qualifies
You may still have a claim if one of these applies to you:
| Route | What it requires |
|---|---|
| Parent or grandparent, exclusively Italian | An Italian parent or grandparent who held only Italian citizenship — no second citizenship — at the time of your birth or at their death |
| Italian parent who lived in Italy | An Italian parent who resided continuously in Italy for at least two years before your birth or adoption |
| Filed before the cutoff | An application submitted administratively or in court before 27 March 2025, which remains under the previous, broader rules |
| Appointment secured before the cutoff | A consular or municipal appointment confirmed before the same date |
| Documented steps before the cutoff | Evidence of concrete action taken before the deadline — records requests, an engaged attorney, documented booking attempts. This category is the most contested and the most fact-specific |
Who no longer qualifies
Bluntly, because vagueness here wastes people’s money:
- Descendants beyond the grandparent generation, in the ordinary case. Great-grandparent claims that were the backbone of jure sanguinis applications are, as a general rule, gone.
- People born abroad to an Italian parent who already held dual citizenship at the time of that birth, without the residence connection.
- People who had thought about applying, researched it, or intended to apply, but took no documented action before 27 March 2025.
If you are in this group, that is genuinely disappointing news and it is better to hear it now than after spending two thousand euros on apostilled documents.
Deadlines for minor children
Special timing applies to registering minors, and these dates matter because missing them forecloses the option:
| Situation | Deadline to register |
|---|---|
| Child born before 25 May 2025 | 31 May 2029 |
| Child born on or after 25 May 2025 | Within three years of birth |
One piece of good news
The administrative fee that applicants used to pay — a charge of 250 euros — was abolished with effect from 1 January 2026. It is a small consolation against the eligibility restrictions, but if you do qualify, the process costs less than it did.
What to do if you think you might qualify
- Map the chain precisely. Write out every generation from the Italian-born ancestor to you, with birth, marriage, naturalisation and death dates. The naturalisation dates are what usually decide a case.
- Establish whether your qualifying ancestor held any other citizenship at the relevant moment. Under the current rules this is often the deciding fact, and it is frequently the hardest one to prove.
- Gather what documents you can cheaply — most Italian civil records are free online. Our guides on finding your ancestral town and using the Antenati portal cover this at no cost.
- Then, and only then, consult a lawyer. Go with a documented chain rather than a hopeful question. A consultation with the paperwork in hand is far more useful and far cheaper than one without.
If the answer is no
Losing a citizenship claim does not take away the ancestry, and for most people the citizenship was never really the point — it was a way of making the connection concrete. There are other ways to do that, and they do not require a consulate.
You can find the town, read the actual record of your great-grandmother’s birth in her own comune’s register, and go and stand in the street where the family lived. That is available to everyone, costs almost nothing, and a surprising number of people who did get the passport say the archive work meant more to them than the document did.
Start with finding the town, and learn enough Italian to write to the comune and be understood when you arrive — our traveler phrases and course comparison are built for exactly that trip.