At any Italian consulate in the world
The Italian consulates apply one procedure, that of the circular of the Ministry of the Interior of 8 April 1991, and one competence, that of the district in which the applicant lives. Everything else, the booking system, the proof of residence it asks for, the documents it lists and the time it takes, is the practice of the single office, and the practice of the consulates in the countries of emigration, where the demand exceeds the capacity by a wide margin, has shaped the reform of 2026 which is about to change the procedure for everyone.
The consulate of the district
An application is lodged with the consulate of the consular district in which the applicant has the legal residence, and with no other. The consulates verify the residence in the form of their country, an identity document with the address, a registration in a local register, a bill or a lease, and some of them require a minimum period in the district before they accept the application, as the consulate in Mendoza, which asks for six months at the same address recorded in the national identity document. An applicant who lives in a district other than that of the family’s origin, or who has moved recently, must therefore first establish where the residence lies and prove it, and an application lodged in a district where the applicant does not live is refused. The appointment is booked through the Prenot@mi portal of the Ministry at most consulates, which release dates in batches, and the booking is the narrowest point of the whole procedure.
The limits until 2028
Law 11 of 19 January 2026, in force since 19 February 2026, rewrote article 10 of the consular law. Until 31 December 2028 each consulate receives in a year a number of applications fixed by reference to the files it concluded, and in no case fewer than one hundred, and it decides them within thirty-six months. The limit has had an immediate effect in the districts of greatest demand: the Consulate General in Sydney announced in March 2026 that it could no longer offer new appointments to adult applicants, and other consulates publish the number of dates they release each month. A consulate which has reached its limit for the year accepts the application in the following one, and an applicant who holds a protected position under article 3-bis, with an appointment communicated before 28 March 2025, keeps it. The consulates continue in every case to recognise the minor children of recognised citizens, to verify that recognised citizens keep the status, and to issue the certificates of citizenship.
The central office from 2029
From 1 January 2029 the applications of adults who live abroad are lodged no longer with the consulate but with an office of the central administration of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. The application is sent by post, with the original documents and the proof of payment of the consular fee, and the office communicates with the applicant by email, at the address given in the application, with the notices deemed received when sent. The Ministry may entrust the receipt, the digitisation and the archiving of the files to an outside service, at the applicant’s cost, and the return of the originals after a refusal is likewise at the applicant’s cost. For the first two years the office receives a yearly number of applications related to those for which the consulates collected the fee, and it decides within thirty-six months. The files received by the consulates before 2029 remain with them.
A woman in Córdoba, Argentina, granddaughter of a man from Calabria who never naturalised, asks in 2027 for an appointment at the consulate of her district, which has exhausted its limit for the year and offers dates in 2028. She lodges the application at the appointment in 2028, pays the fee, and her file remains with the consulate, which decides it within thirty-six months. Her cousin in Rosario, who waits until 2029, sends the same file by post to the central office in Rome and receives its notices by email.
The fee and the examination
The consular fee for an application by an adult is six hundred euro, the amount fixed by the Budget Law for 2025 from 1 January 2025, collected in the local currency at the consular rate, due for each adult applicant and not refunded if the application is refused. Minors are exempt. At the appointment the office checks the chain of the certificates, the legalisation and the translation of each, and the proof concerning the naturalisation of the ancestor, asks the Italian comune to confirm the record of the ancestor and the Ministry of the Interior to confirm that no renunciation is on file, and, when the examination is positive, recognises the citizenship, transcribes the certificates in the comune and registers the applicant in the AIRE. The applicant who moves to another district before the appointment applies at the consulate of the new residence, and the position of a file already lodged is settled between the two offices on the proof of the new residence.
Send us the family line and the country and district in which you live. We tell you which consulate is competent, what proof of residence it requires, whether it is accepting applications this year, and how the file must be prepared for it.