Draft — read the warning below too
The rules on this page are read from the statute itself and from the Constitutional Court’s own ruling upholding it, not from secondary summaries. A few real questions — chiefly how this interacts with the separate “1948” line of cases, and whether a different legal challenge could still succeed — aren’t settled by anything found so far.
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.
Talk to a professional before you act on this page
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.
What this page does not cover
- 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.
The legislation and the ruling
- 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). 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 — 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.
Open questions — what a checker needs to settle
- RESOLVED 2026-09-14 — the reform is retroactive by its own express terms, and this is the headline fact most coverage undersells. Art. 3-bis applies to a person 'nato all'estero ANCHE PRIMA della data di entrata in vigore del presente articolo' (born abroad even BEFORE this article's entry into force) — someone who has spent years believing themselves an Italian dual citizen by descent, but never actually applied for formal recognition, can be affected by this rule today, not just someone born after 29 March 2025.
- RESOLVED 2026-09-14 — the 'grandparent' savings clause is narrower than most coverage states. Condition (c) requires that a parent or grandparent 'possiede, o possedeva al momento della morte, ESCLUSIVAMENTE la cittadinanza italiana' (holds, or held at death, EXCLUSIVELY Italian citizenship) — not merely that they were born in Italy, or that they were Italian. An ascendant who held dual citizenship (Italian plus another country's) does NOT satisfy this condition, even if they were born in Italy and lived there their whole life. This distinction is easy to state incorrectly and this page has seen it stated incorrectly elsewhere.
- RESOLVED 2026-09-14 — the pre-reform cutoff is a specific instant, not a date range: 23:59, Rome time, 27 March 2025. Status already administratively recognized by then (art. 3-bis lett. a), an application with a confirmed appointment communicated by then (lett. a-bis, added during conversion), or a court petition filed by then (lett. b), all preserve pre-reform eligibility regardless of when the case is actually resolved. A fifth original condition (lett. e) existed in the decree-law as first issued and was deleted entirely during conversion — this page has not read what it said, since it no longer has legal effect.
- RESOLVED 2026-09-14 — the Constitutional Court's ruling (sentenza 63/2026) turned on a specific legal characterisation: the Court held art. 3-bis is a 'preclusione originaria' (an original bar on ever acquiring the status) rather than a 'revoca' (a revocation of a status already held) — legally, this is why it found no violation of acquired rights. The Court was explicit that the rule does NOT touch anyone already recognized as a citizen, or anyone who had an application or court case underway by 27 March 2025. The EU-law challenge failed for a parallel reason: the CJEU case law the Tribunale di Torino relied on (requiring individualised proportionality review) applies to a state stripping an ALREADY-recognized citizen of status, which the Court held is not what art. 3-bis does.
- UNRESOLVED — what the Constitutional Court's ruling does NOT settle. Two of the four challenges (under the 1948 Universal Declaration and ECHR Protocol 4) were rejected as INADMISSIBLE — a procedural finding that the referring court hadn't properly argued the point — not decided on the merits. Whether a differently-argued challenge on the same grounds, a challenge from a different referring court, or an application to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (a genuinely separate forum from Italy's own Corte Costituzionale, reachable only after domestic remedies are exhausted) could still succeed is not something this page can answer. Treat the reform as having survived its first, and so far only, constitutional test — not as permanently beyond any future challenge.
- UNRESOLVED — this page describes the JUS SANGUINIS route only, as reshaped by the 2025 reform. It does not cover the separate, long-standing 'question 1948' line of cases (pre-1948, only Italian fathers could transmit citizenship to children; courts later held that unconstitutional, but recognition for a pre-1948 maternal-line claim still requires a judicial proceeding, not administrative recognition, for reasons distinct from the 2025 reform) — this page has not independently re-verified whether or how art. 3-bis's new conditions interact with a 1948-line claim specifically.
- UNRESOLVED — the amendments to art. 4 of L. 91/1992 (automatic transmission to a minor child when a parent naturalizes or reacquires citizenship, now conditioned on the child's own prior residence in Italy) and to the minor-declaration mechanism (the extended 31 May 2029 deadline for children of pre-reform qualifiers) are read and stated as the statute itself states them, but this page has not traced how they interact with every fact pattern a family might present.
- This is, without qualification, the page on this site where 'confirm with a professional before acting' matters most. Citizenship status has consequences — passports, the right to live and work across the EU, tax residence, and a family's ability to pass status to the next generation — that a wrong reading here cannot fix after the fact. Nothing on this page is a substitute for an immigration or citizenship-law professional reviewing a specific family's documented facts.