Italian citizenship by descent (jure sanguinis)
The child of an Italian citizen is Italian from birth. This is the principle of article 1 of Law 91/1992, and it has shaped Italian citizenship for more than a century. Recognition by descent does not create the status. It confirms, after a check of the documents, that the status has always existed. Until the check is done, however, nothing can be exercised: no passport, no registration, no right to vote.
Since 28 March 2025 the principle has a limit. A person born abroad who holds another citizenship is now considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of the conditions in article 3-bis applies. For families in the United Kingdom, where most descendants are British by birth, this is the first question to answer.
Who still qualifies
Article 3-bis protects three positions that were already in motion on 27 March 2025, and opens two conditions for everybody else.
Positions already in motion
- An application for recognition, with the required documents, lodged with the consulate or the comune by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025.
- An appointment for the application communicated by the competent office by that same time, provided the application was then lodged on the date given.
- A judicial claim for the ascertainment of citizenship filed with an Italian court by that same time.
The Constitutional Court, in judgment 63/2026, and the Court of Cassation, in judgment 24045/2026 of the United Sections, both treat these positions as protected. The applications are examined under the law in force before the decree.
The two conditions for everybody else
- An ascendant of the first or second degree, a parent or a grandparent, holds, or held at the time of death, exclusively Italian citizenship. These are the words of the law. The Ministry of the Interior reads the condition at the moment of your birth, as explained below.
- A parent, or an adoptive parent, resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the birth or the adoption of the applicant.
In practice this limits recognition by descent to the children and grandchildren of a person who was still only Italian when they were born, and to the children of a parent who lived in Italy as an Italian for two years before they were born. The Ministry of the Interior’s circular of 28 May 2025 places the test at the birth of the applicant, and the consulates in the United Kingdom apply it that way: what counts is the citizenship the parent or grandparent held on the day you were born, not what they acquired afterwards. Great-grandchildren qualify only if a parent or grandparent of theirs meets one of the two conditions.
Your grandfather was born in Campania, came to London in 1962 and worked here until he died in 2004. He never applied for British citizenship. Your mother was born in London and is British. You qualify under the first condition: a grandparent who held only Italian citizenship. The file must prove his Italian birth, his marriage, his death and, through the Home Office, the fact that he never naturalised.
Your great-grandfather emigrated to Glasgow in 1911 and became British in 1930. His son, your grandfather, was born in 1925. Your grandfather and your father never held an Italian document. Nobody in the family applied before 27 March 2025. Under article 3-bis the line is closed by descent. The open routes are the declaration for minor children of an Italian citizen, where a parent has first obtained recognition, or naturalisation after two years of residence in Italy.
What has to be proved
Recognition follows the procedure of circular K.28.1 of 8 April 1991 of the Ministry of the Interior. For residents abroad the competent authority is the consulate of the district where you live. Four facts must be proved, generation by generation.
- Descent from the Italian ancestor who transmitted citizenship, with the birth, marriage and death certificates of every person in the line.
- That the ancestor was not naturalised abroad before the birth of the next person in the line, or the exact date of naturalisation if it happened. The evidence comes from the foreign authority. In the United Kingdom it comes from the Home Office and, for older cases, from The National Archives.
- The parentage of each generation, through birth and marriage certificates legalised with the apostille and accompanied by an official translation into Italian.
- That neither you nor anyone in the line ever renounced Italian citizenship, which the consulate certifies through its own records.
Transmission through a woman applies only to children born after 1 January 1948, the day the Constitution came into force. Where the line passes through a woman who gave birth before that date, the consulate cannot recognise the citizenship. Those cases can only be decided by a court. We say so in the written assessment, and we do not handle court proceedings.
Where the condition relied on is the exclusive Italian citizenship of a parent or grandparent, the consulate asks for positive proof: a certificate of citizenship from the Italian comune, a negative certificate or a letter from the foreign authority confirming that the person had not naturalised at the time of your birth, and where relevant a declaration of renunciation of a foreign citizenship or a certificate of non-registration on the foreign electoral roll. Where the condition is the two years of residence in Italy, the proof is a historical certificate of residence from the comune.
The documents, for a British family
- Birth certificate of the Italian ancestor, issued by the comune of birth as an extract of the civil register. Marriage certificate from the comune, or from the country of marriage.
- Long-form birth and marriage certificates from the General Register Office for every person born in England and Wales, with the equivalents from Scotland and Northern Ireland.
- Death certificates where the ancestor has died, and a record of the surname and the dates as written in each document.
- Evidence of non-naturalisation or of the date of naturalisation from the Home Office, and where needed the naturalisation certificate itself.
- Apostille from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on every British certificate, and an official translation into Italian.
- Your own passport and proof of residence in the consular district.
Names and dates must match from one document to the next. A surname spelt two ways, a birth date that differs between a baptism and a civil record, a mother recorded under her maiden name in one country and her married name in another: each of these is a reason for the consulate to stop. They are the most frequent cause of delay and they are better resolved before the appointment than after. The common problems page will cover them in detail.
The procedure at the consulate
In the United Kingdom the competent offices are the Consulate General in London, the Consulate in Manchester and the Consulate in Edinburgh, each for its own district. Appointments are booked through the consular online system and are the real bottleneck of the procedure. Law 11/2026, in force since 19 February 2026, limits the number of applications each consulate accepts in a year until 31 December 2028, and from 1 January 2029 moves the applications of adults resident abroad to a central office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, with a paper application sent by post and a decision within thirty-six months.
At the appointment the applicant lodges the complete file and pays the consular fee. The office checks the chain of documents, asks the Italian comune to confirm the ancestor’s record, and asks the Ministry of the Interior to confirm that no renunciation is on file. When the check is positive the consulate recognises the citizenship, transcribes the birth and marriage certificates in the comune of origin, registers the applicant in the AIRE, the Registry of Italians Residing Abroad, and the passport can be requested.
A descendant who moves to Italy can apply to the comune of residence instead of the consulate. A residence permit pending citizenship, provided for by circular 32/2007, covers the period of the examination. This route is often quicker, and it requires living in Italy while the application is examined.
Fees and timing
The consular fee for an application by an adult is 600 euro, charged in sterling at the consular exchange rate, 522.30 pounds at the London table for the second quarter of 2026. It is paid at the appointment and it is not refunded if the application is refused. Italian certificates, apostilles and translations are separate costs. There is no fixed statutory deadline that binds the consulate on applications by descent. The waiting time depends on the office, on the quota of the year and on the completeness of the file.
What the courts have decided
The 2025 reform has been examined by the Constitutional Court twice. Judgment 63/2026 of 30 April 2026 held that article 3-bis is retroactive but does not revoke anything: for a person born abroad whose citizenship was never recognised, the status was never legally certain, and Parliament could make its acquisition depend on an effective link with Italy. Order 147/2026 of 23 July 2026 confirmed that reading and referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union the question whether EU law allows such a rule. The proceedings before the Italian courts of Mantua and Campobasso are suspended until Luxembourg answers. The rule remains in force in the meantime.
The Court of Cassation, in judgment 24045/2026 of the United Sections, decided that a child born abroad to an Italian parent in a country that grants citizenship by birth holds both citizenships from birth and keeps the Italian one even if the parent later naturalises. This overturns the line of decisions that had led many consulates to refuse applications since October 2024 on the ground of the so called minor issue. The Ministry of the Interior has since opened a re-examination of those refusals. If your application was refused on that ground, the refusal can be reviewed at the consulate, within the conditions of article 3-bis.
After recognition
Recognition is complete only when the registers are in order: the birth transcribed in the Italian comune, the marriage transcribed where relevant, the AIRE registration active. A passport is issued on that basis and renewed on that basis. Where a birth was never transcribed, or the AIRE record was never created, the consulate refuses to issue or renew the passport until the record is corrected. This is the single most frequent problem we see among Italians already living in the United Kingdom, and it is dealt with in the page on consular services.
If you are not sure which of these situations is yours, send us the family line with the dates and the documents you already hold. The written assessment tells you whether a route is open, which one, and what it will require.