Italian Citizenship by Descent: What Changed in 2025 and Who Still Qualifies

Last updated: April 2026
Individuals with Italian ancestors can claim Italian citizenship by descent or ancestry (Jus Sanguinis) if they are able to prove that the bloodline has been passed down. As long as the Italian parent has not lost his or her citizenship prior to the birth of his or her child, the citizenship is carried down to the next generation and the child can inherit Italian citizenship.

For most of the last forty years, Italy ran the most generous citizenship-by-descent program in Europe. If you could prove an unbroken line back to an Italian-born ancestor, the passport was yours, no matter how many generations separated you from the emigrant who left. That era is over. In March 2025 the Meloni government issued the Tajani decree, parliament converted it into Law 74/2025 on May 23, 2025, and on March 12, 2026 the Constitutional Court left the core of the reform standing. If you are researching Italian citizenship for yourself or your children, the rules you read on older blog posts no longer apply.

This guide walks through who is still eligible, what the two-generation cap means in practice, and how the transitional rules treat cases that were already in the pipeline when the law changed.

What is jure sanguinis

Italian citizenship has always followed jure sanguinis, the right of blood. The state recognizes you as Italian because an ancestor was Italian and passed that status down the family line without breaking the chain. Until 2025 the law did not put a generational ceiling on the principle, so an applicant in Buenos Aires or Boston could claim citizenship through a great-great-grandparent who left Italy in the 1880s, as long as no one in the chain naturalized in the new country before the next child in line was born.
The core idea is still there. What changed is the distance that the blood is allowed to travel.

The relationship was unlikely to be severed after that. If your Italian ancestor is male, you can begin the process of claiming Italian citizenship at an Italian consulate or Italian embassy near you. It could take two or three years. You can now petition an Italian court and receive a decision within a year. If the link is through a female ancestor, the process of obtaining Italian citizenship can be petitioned in an Italian court. Claiming citizenship could take a year.

Option 3 is for those who have an Italian father or grandfather but do not fit into the first two categories. The candidate must have maintained a residence permit for at least three years prior to applying for fast-track citizenship under this option. The mere possession of the permit for three years is sufficient to claim citizenship, and personal presence in Italy is not required. Nonetheless, most resident permit categories often include a 6-month actual presence in Italy requirement.

The two-generation cap

Law 74/2025 limits automatic recognition to people whose Italian-born ancestor is a parent or grandparent. Great-grandparents and earlier ancestors no longer qualify for recognition through the consular or municipal route. In practical terms:

• If one of your parents was born in Italy, you qualify.
• If one of your grandparents was born in Italy and the chain to you is unbroken, you qualify.
• If your closest Italian-born ancestor is a great-grandparent or further back, the jure sanguinis door is closed.

The cap applies to new applications received after March 27, 2025, the date the decree took effect. The Constitutional Court reviewed the generational limit in its March 12, 2026 ruling and found it compatible with the Italian constitution, so the cap is settled law for the foreseeable future.

What happens to applications filed before the cutoff

The transitional provisions in Law 74/2025 protect files that were already in the system. If your application was formally received by an Italian consulate, an Italian comune, or an Italian court before March 27, 2025, your case is assessed under the old rules, which means the old unlimited generational reach still governs your file. The date that matters is the stamped-in date on the receiving side, not the date you started preparing your documents.

Anyone who was drafting an application in early 2025 but had not yet filed is out of luck, and the reform has already triggered a wave of court cases from families who feel they missed the window by weeks.

Minor children of recognized Italians

The ministry issued a follow-up memo on May 28, 2025 that clarified how minors are treated. A child born abroad to a parent who has been recognized as Italian can still acquire citizenship in a few ways:

• Both parents file a declaration within one year of the child’s birth or adoption.
• Both parents file a declaration and the child then lives legally in Italy for at least two continuous years.
• Both parents file the declaration before May 31, 2026, under the transitional window set by Law 74/2025.

This matters for any family where a parent already secured recognition under the old regime and has a child born after the reform. The paperwork is straightforward but the deadlines are real, and the one-year rule runs from the child’s date of birth, not from the day the parents learned about it.

The administrative route versus the judicial route

Before 2025 many applicants with a consulate wait time measured in years used the judicial route, a lawsuit filed in an Italian court to force recognition. Law 74/2025 did not close that door, but it did change who can walk through it. The courts now apply the same two-generation cap that the consulates apply, so the judicial route is no longer a way to revive a great-grandparent claim. It is still useful for cases inside the cap where a consulate is slow or has denied recognition on questionable grounds.

Separately, a judicial path still exists for people whose Italian-born ancestor is a woman who had a child before January 1, 1948. The 1948 cases remain one of the few ways to challenge the old male-line rule, and they proceed in court rather than at a consulate.

Required documents

Recognition under the current rules still turns on the same chain of civil records:

• Your Italian ancestor’s Italian birth certificate, ordered from the comune of birth.
• The marriage certificate of that ancestor.
• Proof of the ancestor’s naturalization history in the country they moved to, or proof that they never naturalized. This is the single most common reason a file fails, because a naturalization before the next child’s birth breaks the chain.
• Every birth, marriage, and death certificate linking the Italian ancestor to you, with every record apostilled and translated into Italian by a certified translator.
• Your own birth certificate, valid passport, and proof of residence.

Consulates and comuni vary on the small stuff, so check the specific requirements of the office that will handle your file before you order certified copies.

What to do if you are outside the two-generation cap

If your Italian-born ancestor is a great-grandparent or further back, you have a few options worth weighing:

• Residency-based naturalization. Move to Italy, live there legally for the required period (currently ten years for most non-EU nationals, reduced in specific cases), and apply. This is slow but certain.
• The Italian Descendants visa. Introduced in 2025 alongside the reform, this visa lets descendants of Italian emigrants live in Italy with a simplified entry path, which can then feed into the standard naturalization clock.
• Marriage to an Italian citizen cuts the residency requirement for applicants living in Italy and extends it for those abroad.
• Other EU citizenships. If your family tree includes Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, or Irish roots, the rules in those countries may still allow a descent claim that Italy now refuses.

Is it still worth pursuing

For anyone with a parent or grandparent born in Italy, the answer is yes. The Italian passport remains one of the strongest travel documents in the world, it grants the right to live, work, and retire anywhere in the European Union, and the application is cheaper and less bureaucratic than any residency-based program in the bloc.

For everyone else, the calculus has shifted. Italy closed the generational loophole that made jure sanguinis a mass market service, and alternative European citizenships that once sat in its shadow are worth a fresh look.

SovSpot lists vetted professionals who work on Italian citizenship files every day, both under the current cap and on the judicial side for 1948 cases. If you want a first read on whether your family tree still fits the law, start with our Italian citizenship service providers directory.