For most of the last century Italy transmitted citizenship down an unbroken bloodline with no generational limit, which is why so many Americans, Brazilians, Argentinians and Australians grew up being told they could claim a passport through a great-grandparent. That ended on 27 March 2025, and in March 2026 the Constitutional Court confirmed it was going to stay ended.
Quick answer: since Law 74/2025 you qualify automatically only if you have an Italian-born parent or grandparent who held Italian citizenship exclusively at the relevant moment. Great-grandparents and beyond no longer work. Files lodged before 27 March 2025 keep the old rules. The Constitutional Court dismissed the challenges on 12 March 2026, so this is settled law rather than a temporary measure. Those now excluded have a shortened naturalisation route: two years of residence instead of ten.
Who still qualifies after Law 74/2025?
The reform replaced an unlimited bloodline with a two-degree limit, and added a condition about the ancestor’s other passports that catches families who assumed the generation test was the only hurdle.
| Your Italian ancestor | Automatic recognition? | The condition attached |
|---|---|---|
| Parent, born in Italy | Yes | Must have held Italian citizenship exclusively at the time of your birth |
| Grandparent, born in Italy | Yes | Must have held Italian citizenship exclusively at the time of your parent’s birth |
| Great-grandparent | No, not since 27 March 2025 | The route is closed regardless of how clean the documentary chain is |
| More distant than that | No | Closed |
The exclusivity condition is the part that surprises people. It is not enough that the grandparent was born in Italy and never formally renounced. If they had naturalised in the United States, Argentina or Australia and held two passports at the moment your parent was born, the line is treated as broken. Families who spent years assembling naturalisation records to prove the ancestor did not naturalise before a key date are now often proving the opposite of what helps them.
Second point worth stating plainly: this is about automatic recognition of a citizenship the law considers you to have held since birth. It is not an application for a new status, which is why documentary standards are so unforgiving. One mismatch between a birth certificate and a marriage record can stall a file for a year.
What happened at the Constitutional Court in 2026?
The challenges failed. After a hearing on 11 March 2026 the Court announced its decision on 12 March 2026, dismissing the questions of constitutional legitimacy and confirming that the generational limit is compatible with both constitutional principles and European law.
That matters for planning more than it might appear. Between March 2025 and March 2026 a large amount of advice circulated on the assumption that the restriction would be struck down and the old rules restored, and some families deliberately waited rather than pursuing alternatives. That bet has now lost. Anyone whose descent claim falls outside the two-degree limit should be planning around the residency route rather than around a reversal.
Does the cut-off date apply to me?
The dividing line is 27 March 2025 at 23:59 Rome time, and what counts is not when you started gathering documents but whether one of three things had happened by that moment.
- An application had been formally lodged, at a consulate or a comune
- A consular appointment had been booked
- Court proceedings had been initiated
Any of those three keeps your file under the previous rules, with no generational limit. Gathering records, paying a service, or being on a waiting list for an appointment slot does not, and that distinction has produced a great deal of disappointment among families who had been working on a claim for years without formally starting it.
Minor children carry their own timetable. A child born before 25 May 2025 has until 31 May 2029 for the declaration. A child born after that date has three years from birth. Both are hard deadlines.
What is left if you no longer qualify?
Naturalisation by residence, and for this particular group it was deliberately shortened. Where an Italian-born parent or grandparent exists but the descent conditions are not met, the residence requirement is two years rather than the ordinary ten that applies to other non-EU nationals. There is also a facilitation on the employment side: direct descendants may in some cases enter for work outside the standard immigration quota system, where their country has a significant history of Italian emigration.
| Route | Residence required | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Recognition by descent | None | Italian-born parent or grandparent, exclusivity condition met |
| Naturalisation, descendant track | 2 years | Italian-born parent or grandparent, descent conditions not met |
| Naturalisation, EU nationals | 4 years | Citizens of another EU member state |
| Naturalisation, marriage | 2 to 3 years | Spouses of Italian citizens, timing varies with residence and children |
| Naturalisation, ordinary | 10 years | Everyone else |
The catch in the two-year route is the word residence. It means legally living in Italy, which means holding a visa and a permesso di soggiorno for the whole period, and registering with the comune. In practice that turns a citizenship question into a relocation question, and the relocation has to come first. Our guide to moving to Italy from the USA sets out the order the steps have to happen in, and elective residence covers the route most people on capital income use to establish that residence.
What does a descent file actually contain?
Recognition is a documentary exercise, and the reason cases take years is almost never the law. It is that a chain of certificates issued across two or three countries and up to 120 years has to agree with itself on every name, date and place.
| Document | For whom | The usual problem |
|---|---|---|
| Italian birth record of the ancestor | The Italian-born parent or grandparent | Obtained from the comune of birth, which may hold it under a spelling nobody in the family uses |
| Naturalisation record, or proof of none | The same ancestor | Now decisive under the exclusivity condition, and the answer you need has reversed |
| Birth, marriage and death certificates | Every person in the line, including you | Each must be a long-form certified copy, not a short abstract |
| Apostilles | Every non-Italian document | Issued by the state or federal authority, not the issuing office |
| Sworn translations into Italian | Every non-Italian document | Must be done by a translator the consulate or comune accepts |
The single most common cause of delay is a name discrepancy: an ancestor recorded as Giovanni in Italy and John in the country they emigrated to, or a surname respelled by an immigration clerk in 1908. Italian authorities require these reconciled, usually by a court-issued correction or a formal declaration, and each one adds months.
Two practical rules follow. Start with the naturalisation record rather than the birth certificate, because under the exclusivity condition it now determines whether the rest of the work is worth doing at all. And order documents in the order the chain runs, not the order they are easy to get, so that a break shows up in week three rather than in month eighteen.
Where you file also changes the timetable materially. Consular queues in countries with large Italian diaspora populations have historically run for years, while filing at a comune as a resident in Italy is faster, which is one of the reasons some families combine a claim with a relocation rather than treating them as separate projects.
Does owning property in Italy help?
Not with the citizenship claim itself. There is no investment route to an Italian passport, property carries no weight in a descent file, and no amount of real estate shortens a naturalisation clock. Any adviser suggesting otherwise is describing something that does not exist.
Where property does matter is one step removed. Every residency route requires a documented Italian address, and the two-year naturalisation clock only runs while you are legally resident, which means you need somewhere to be resident. A purchase satisfies that permanently; a registered lease of at least twelve months satisfies it for as long as it runs. US citizens have full purchase rights in Italy under the reciprocity rule regardless of immigration status, which our reciprocity guide sets out, and the mechanics of buying are the same for everyone in buying property in Italy as a foreigner. US applicants in particular should read the American buyer’s guide alongside it, because the tax side does not go away with the passport.
The sequence that works: establish the route, then the visa, then the address, then the clock. The sequence that fails: buy the house first because it felt like progress.
What does pursuing a claim cost?
There is no single fee, and the government charge is the smallest part of it. The €250 declaration fee was removed with effect from 1 January 2026, which helps, but the real spending sits in records and professional time.
Expect to pay for certified long-form certificates from every jurisdiction in the chain, apostilles on each non-Italian document, sworn translations of all of them, and, where a name discrepancy exists, a court correction. Families running a three-generation chain across two countries commonly spend low four figures on documents alone before any adviser is involved, and a full-service assisted claim runs well beyond that.
That is why the exclusivity check belongs first. Spending 6 to 9 months and several thousand on a chain that the ancestor’s second passport was always going to break is the most expensive avoidable mistake in this area, and it is being made now by people working from guidance written before 2025.
Who this is for: three scenarios
Descent cases now split into three quite different projects, and the right first move is different in each.
| Scenario | First move | The mistake to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Italian-born grandparent, no other passport held at the relevant date | Assemble the documentary chain and book the appointment | Assuming the exclusivity condition is a formality; check the naturalisation record first |
| Italian-born grandparent who had naturalised abroad | Stop working on the descent file; price the two-year residence route | Waiting for a court reversal that already failed in March 2026 |
| Great-grandparent only, file not lodged before 27 March 2025 | Treat descent as closed and plan a relocation on its merits | Paying a service to continue a claim that the law no longer permits |
Pros of the position after the reform. For those who do qualify, files are cleaner and queues should shorten as the eligible pool narrows. The two-year naturalisation track is genuinely generous compared with ten. And the declaration fee of €250 was removed with effect from 1 January 2026.
Cons. An entire category of claimants lost a route many had spent years and real money pursuing, the exclusivity condition disqualifies families who did nothing wrong, and the Constitutional Court has removed the hope of a reversal.
Red flags and what to check before you spend anything
- A service that has not asked about your ancestor’s other citizenship. The exclusivity condition is now decisive and any assessment that skips it is not an assessment.
- Advice written before March 2026. A great deal of published guidance still assumes the restriction might fall. It did not.
- “Filed” used loosely. Confirm in writing whether an application was formally lodged, an appointment booked, or proceedings started before 27 March 2025. Nothing else preserves the old rules.
- Anyone connecting property to a passport. There is no such connection in Italian law.
- A quoted timeline with no jurisdiction attached. Consular queues and the comune route differ by years, not months.
Where should you read next?
If the descent route is open to you, the next question is procedural and belongs with a consulate or a specialist lawyer rather than with us. If it has closed, the question becomes relocation, and that is where this site can help: work out what a month actually costs in the region you are considering in our cost of living guide, then decide which visa fits in elective residence or the digital nomad route.
One closing note on sourcing. The rules described here changed in 2025 and were tested in court in 2026, and consular practice is still settling around them. Treat this page as orientation and confirm your own position with the consulate that covers your place of residence before spending money on documents.
Frequently Asked Questions
Not automatically. Law 74/2025 limited recognition to applicants with an Italian-born parent or grandparent, and everyone beyond that second degree lost the automatic route from 27 March 2025. Files lodged, appointments booked or court proceedings started before that moment are still assessed under the old rules.
It dismissed the constitutional challenges. The ruling was announced on 12 March 2026, after a hearing the previous day, and confirmed that the generational limit is compatible with constitutional principles and European law. The restriction is settled rather than provisional.
The qualifying ancestor must have held Italian citizenship and no other at the relevant moment: the parent at your birth, or the grandparent at your parent's birth. Where the ancestor had naturalised elsewhere and held two passports, the line is treated as broken.
Yes. Naturalisation by residence was reduced to two years for people whose Italian-born parent or grandparent does not meet the descent conditions, against the ordinary ten years for other non-EU nationals. It requires actually living in Italy, which means a visa first.
No. Property ownership carries no weight in a citizenship application and Italy has no investment route to a passport. Property matters only in the sense that a residency-based route requires you to live somewhere, and a deed or registered lease proves the address.
For children born before 25 May 2025 the declaration deadline is 31 May 2029. For children born after that date the declaration is due within three years of birth. These are hard deadlines, not guidelines.
It depends entirely on where you file. Consular queues in countries with large Italian diaspora populations have historically run for years, while the comune route for applicants resident in Italy is faster. Neither is quick, and both are slower than the two-year naturalisation clock for those who qualify for it.
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