Italian citizenship by descent — what changed in 2025, and who still qualifies
Since 29 March 2025, someone born abroad who holds another citizenship is treated by Italian law as having NEVER acquired Italian citizenship through an Italian ancestor — retroactively, including for people born long before the rule existed — UNLESS a parent or grandparent held ONLY Italian citizenship (not dual), a parent lived in Italy for two-plus years as an Italian citizen before the person's birth, or the person's own recognition was already administratively or judicially in progress by 27 March 2025. Before this reform, Italy's jus sanguinis rule carried no generational limit at all — anyone with an unbroken Italian bloodline back to 1861 could potentially claim citizenship. The Constitutional Court upheld the reform against a first challenge in April 2026, reasoning that it bars new claims rather than revoking status already held.
Every other page on this site is about money or a visa. This one is about whether someone is legally an Italian citizen — a status with consequences (passports, the right to live and work across the EU, what a family can pass to the next generation) that a wrong reading here cannot fix after the fact. The exceptions below turn on exact facts — whether an ascendant held Italian citizenship exclusively, precise dates, exactly what was filed and when. Have a citizenship-law professional review your specific family’s documented history before relying on anything here.
This applies retroactively — the part most coverage understates. The 2025 reform doesn’t just change the rule for people born after it took effect. By its own words, it applies to a person “born abroad even before the date this article entered into force” — someone who has spent years believing themselves an Italian dual citizen by descent, but never formally applied for recognition, can be affected by this rule today.
Who’s affected, and who’s protected
- Was born abroad and holds another country's citizenship — by default, under the 2025 reform, this person is treated as never having acquired Italian citizenship through an ancestor, however far back the Italian bloodline goes, UNLESS one of the conditions below applies. This default applies retroactively, to people born before the reform as well as after.
- EXCEPTION: a parent or grandparent holds, or held at death, ONLY Italian citizenship — not dual citizenship with any other country. Being 'Italian' or being born in Italy is not enough on its own if that ascendant also held another country's citizenship.
- EXCEPTION: a parent or adoptive parent was legally resident in Italy for at least two continuous years, as an Italian citizen, before this person's birth or adoption.
- EXCEPTION: this person's own citizenship was already recognized — administratively, by a consulate or comune, or judicially, by a court — through an application submitted (with full supporting documentation) by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025, or through a confirmed appointment communicated by that same deadline.
- A foreign or stateless minor child of someone who qualifies as a citizen 'by birth' under one of the pre-27-March-2025 exceptions above can still become a citizen through a parental declaration, either within one year of the child's birth or of Italian filiation being established, or after the child has legally resided in Italy for at least two continuous years following the declaration. Minors already in this position when the 2025 reform's conversion law took effect have an extended declaration deadline of 31 May 2029.
- Everyone outside these conditions remains eligible for Italian citizenship only through the general routes open to anyone — principally ordinary residency-based naturalization — not through an ancestor, however documented the ancestry.
- The Constitutional Court upheld this framework against a first challenge in April 2026, on the reasoning that it bars new claims rather than revoking a status already recognized — someone whose citizenship was already formally recognized before the reform, or whose case was already filed by 27 March 2025, keeps their position regardless.
- Does not cover the separate 'question 1948' line of cases (pre-1948 maternal-line claims, which need a court proceeding for reasons distinct from the 2025 reform) in any detail, or how the 2025 reform's conditions interact with one.
- Does not independently verify whether a European Court of Human Rights application, or a constitutional challenge argued differently than the Tribunale di Torino's, could still succeed where the April 2026 ruling found the specific arguments raised inadmissible or unfounded.
- Does not trace the minor-child transmission and declaration provisions (the amendments to art. 4, L. 91/1992) against every family fact pattern — states what the statute itself says, not a worked example.
- Says nothing about the practical application process, current consular or comune processing times, or documentary requirements — this page covers legal eligibility only.
- Legge 5 febbraio 1992, n. 91, art. 3-bis (inserted by D.L. 28 marzo 2025, n. 36, art. 1, as converted with amendments by L. 23 maggio 2025, n. 74) — VERIFIED — read in full, verbatim, from Normattiva's currently-in-force text (last updated 28 February 2026; re-read 2026-10-15, no later amendment). The operative rule: a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is deemed to have NEVER acquired Italian citizenship — retroactively, including for people born before this article existed — unless one of five conditions applies. This is the single most consequential provision on this page and the one every figure and claim below traces back to.
- Corte Costituzionale, sentenza n. 63 del 30 aprile 2026 (ECLI:IT:COST:2026:63), press release — VERIFIED — read in full from the Court's own official press release (Comunicato del 30 aprile 2026). Rejected a referral from the Tribunale di Torino (ordinanza 25 giugno 2025) challenging art. 3-bis's constitutionality on four grounds. The claim under art. 3 Cost. (acquired rights) and the EU-law claim (art. 9 TEU, art. 20 TFEU) were rejected on the merits; the claims under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ECHR Protocol 4 were rejected as inadmissible without reaching the merits. See meta.verificationNotes for what the Court's reasoning actually turned on and what it does not settle.
- Corte Costituzionale, sentenza n. 63/2026 (ECLI:IT:COST:2026:63) — judgment page — VERIFIED 2026-10-15 — the Court's own page for the judgment: filed 30 April 2026, published in Gazzetta Ufficiale 6 May 2026 n. 18, rapporteur Pitruzzella. Its operative part declares the interventions and the UDHR and ECHR Protocol 4 questions inadmissible and the art. 3 Cost. and EU-law questions unfounded, as the press release states.