Italian citizenship from outside the United Kingdom

The pages of this site are written from London, but the law they describe is the same at every Italian consulate, and most of the families who write to us from Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Canada or Australia face the same three questions as a family in Manchester: whether the line is still open after 28 March 2025, which office is competent, and how the documents of a country other than Italy are made acceptable to it. This column answers them for an applicant who lives outside the United Kingdom, with the differences which the practice of the consulates in the countries of emigration has introduced, and for the applicant who prefers to settle in Italy and apply to a comune.

The rule which does not change with the country

Citizenship by descent is recognised, not granted. The office verifies that the status has passed from the Italian ancestor to the applicant without a break, generation by generation, and since 28 March 2025 it verifies first whether article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 leaves the line open: an application, an appointment or a court claim already in place on 27 March 2025, or a parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship on the day the applicant was born, or a parent who lived in Italy for two continuous years as an Italian before the birth. The page on citizenship by descent explains the conditions, and they apply in Buenos Aires as in London. What changes with the country is the proof: the certificates, their legalisation, their translation and above all the evidence that the ancestor did or did not take the citizenship of the country of arrival, which each State records in its own way.

Which office

An applicant who lives abroad applies to the Italian consulate of the district of residence, which asks for the proof of that residence and accepts no application from a resident of another district. An applicant who lives in Italy applies to the comune of residence. Law 11/2026 has placed the consulates under a yearly limit of applications until 31 December 2028, and from 1 January 2029 the applications of adults who live abroad will be lodged by post with a central office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, which decides within thirty-six months and communicates by email, while the consulates keep the applications of minors and the files they received before that date. The consular fee for an adult, six hundred euro since 1 January 2025 under the Budget Law for 2025, is paid at the appointment and is not refunded, and a comune may ask a contribution of up to the same amount under the same law. The page on any Italian consulate in the world sets out the procedure and the transition, and the page on applying in Italy the route through a comune.

The pages of this column

What we do for an applicant abroad

Our work does not depend on where the applicant lives. We establish the line and the state of the Italian records before any certificate is requested, obtain the extracts from the comune and the parish, read the foreign certificates in the version the consulate accepts, prepare the translations with our team of official translators in every language, and assemble the file in the order the office examines it. Where the consulate of the applicant has a practice of its own, as the consulates of the countries of emigration have, we apply it. Where the line admits of no administrative solution, as the maternal line before 1948, the written opinion says so and introduces the family to the lawyers with whom we work in partnership, who conduct the proceedings before the court of the ancestor’s comune.

If you live outside the United Kingdom, send us the family line with the names, the dates and the places, the country where each person lived, and the documents you already hold. The written opinion tells you whether the line is open, which office is competent and what the file must contain in your country.