A guide to Italian citizenship

Italian citizenship is governed by Law 91 of 5 February 1992, amended in 2025 by the most consequential reform since the law was passed. It is held from birth by the child of an Italian citizen, acquired by the spouse of a citizen after a period of marriage, granted to a foreigner after years of legal residence in Italy, and acquired by declaration in a small number of cases which the law lists. Each route has its own conditions, its own office and its own documents, and the family which approaches the question for the first time rarely knows which of them applies to it. This guide sets out the whole of the subject in order, from the status to the passport, and refers at each step to the page which treats the point in detail.

Citizenship and passport

Citizenship is a legal status. A passport is a document which the State issues to a person whose status it has already recognised and recorded. The distinction sounds academic until an office applies it: an Italian consulate issues a passport only to a person whose birth is transcribed in the civil status registers of an Italian comune and whose residence abroad is recorded in the AIRE, the Registry of Italians Residing Abroad. A person born abroad to an Italian parent may hold the status from birth and still be unable to obtain a passport, because nobody ever sent the birth certificate to Italy, and a person who held an Italian passport twenty years ago may be refused its renewal today for the same reason. Nine enquiries out of ten which reach us as requests for a passport are, on examination, requests for the recognition of a citizenship, or for the repair of a record. The guide on how to obtain an Italian passport follows that thread, and the page on refused passports explains the registers.

The routes

The law knows six ways in which a person is, or becomes, Italian, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs presents them in a fixed order, which this site follows. Citizenship by descent, iure sanguinis, is held from birth by the child of an Italian citizen and is recognised, not granted, by the consulate or by a comune after a check of the documents. Citizenship by marriage or civil partnership is granted by decree to the foreign spouse or civil partner of an Italian citizen after two years of marriage if the couple lives in Italy and three if it lives abroad, halved where there are children, with a certificate of Italian at level B1 and an oath. Citizenship by residence, naturalisation, is granted by decree after ten years of legal residence in Italy for most foreigners, four years for citizens of the European Union, and two years for the child or grandchild of an Italian citizen by birth, with the same language certificate and the same oath. Citizenship by declaration, which the law calls acquisition by benefit of law, covers the minor children of an Italian citizen, whose parents declare for them within three years of the birth, and a few other cases of article 4. Birth in Italy confers citizenship only in the residual cases of parents unknown, stateless or unable to transmit theirs, and allows a foreigner born and raised in Italy to elect it within a year of majority. Reacquisition restores a citizenship lost under the old law, by residence in Italy or by declaration. Two further pages treat the maternal line before 1948 and the former Italian territories.

Who qualifies by descent since 2025

Until 27 March 2025 the child of an Italian citizen was Italian from birth without limit of generations, provided the line had never been broken by a naturalisation before the birth of the next person in it. Decree-Law 36/2025, converted by Law 74/2025, added article 3-bis to the law: a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is deemed never to have acquired the Italian one, unless one of the conditions which the article lists applies. The Constitutional Court upheld the rule in judgment 63/2026 and referred its compatibility with European law to the Court of Justice in July 2026, and the rule applies in the meantime.

Three positions are protected because they were already in motion. An application for recognition lodged with the consulate or the comune, with its documents, by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. An appointment for the application communicated by the office by the same time, provided the application was then lodged on the date given. A claim filed with an Italian court by the same time. These files are examined under the law in force before the decree.

For everyone else two conditions remain. A parent or a grandparent held exclusively Italian citizenship on the day the applicant was born, or at death if the death came first. Or a parent lived in Italy for at least two continuous years as an Italian citizen before the birth. The test is applied at the birth of the applicant, as the circular of the Ministry of the Interior of 28 May 2025 directs, so that what the parent or grandparent acquired afterwards does not matter, and what they held before matters only if they still held it on that day. A great-grandchild qualifies only through a parent or grandparent who meets one of the two conditions. Where the line passes through a woman who gave birth before 1 January 1948 the consulate cannot recognise the citizenship, and the case goes to a court, within the same conditions.

The child of a recognised citizen who is not Italian at birth under these rules is not without a route. The parents declare for a minor child within three years of the birth, and until 31 May 2029 for a child who was a minor on 24 May 2025 and whose parent was recognised under the protected positions. An adult whose line is closed, as the child or grandchild of an Italian by birth, is naturalised after two years of legal residence in Italy. The page on minors and the page on residence set out both.

What has to be proved

A file by descent proves four facts, generation by generation, from the ancestor who held the citizenship to the applicant. The descent itself, with the birth, marriage and death certificates of every person in the line. The absence of a naturalisation before the birth of the next person in the line, or its exact date where it occurred, proved by the foreign authority which would have granted it, the Home Office and The National Archives for Britain, the equivalent bodies elsewhere. The parentage of each generation, in certificates legalised with the apostille and accompanied by an official translation into Italian. And the absence of any renunciation of Italian citizenship, which the consulate verifies in its own records. Where the condition relied on is the exclusive Italian citizenship of a parent or grandparent, the consulate asks for positive proof of it at the date of the birth, and where the condition is the two years of residence in Italy, for the historical certificate of residence of the comune.

The documents decide the file. The Italian certificates are issued by the comune as extracts of the civil register, and a birth before the registers were opened is proved with parish records. The British certificates are issued in long form by the General Register Office and its counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland, legalised on paper by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, since the consulates do not accept electronic apostilles, and translated by a translator whose work the consulate accepts. Certificates from any other country follow the rules of that country for legalisation, apostille or consular, and the translation is certified where the document was issued or sworn in Italy. Names and dates must agree from one document to the next, and a surname spelt two ways, a date which differs between a baptism and a civil record or a mother recorded under two surnames stops the file until it is corrected. The pages on documents, on the apostille and on the common problems with documents describe the requirements and the errors we see most often.

Where and how to apply

An applicant who lives abroad applies to the consulate of the district of residence, and to no other. In the United Kingdom the districts are those of the Consulate General in London, the Consulate in Manchester and the Consulate General in Edinburgh. The appointment is booked through the consular online system and is the narrowest point of the procedure, because Law 11/2026 limits the number of applications each consulate accepts in a year until the end of 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 for an adult, fixed by the consular tariff and charged in sterling, from which minors are exempt. The office verifies the chain of documents, asks the comune to confirm the ancestor’s record and the Ministry of the Interior to confirm that no renunciation is on file, and, when the check is positive, recognises the citizenship, transcribes the certificates in the comune, registers the applicant in the AIRE and allows the passport to be requested.

A descendant who moves to Italy applies instead to the comune of residence, with a residence permit pending citizenship which covers the examination, and this route is often quicker, at the price of living in Italy while it lasts. The column of pages on applying from abroad describes the procedure for applicants who live outside the United Kingdom and the rules for documents issued in any country.

Marriage, residence and the declarations

The routes which confer citizenship rather than recognise it are administrative and end with a decree. The spouse of an Italian citizen applies after two years of marriage in Italy or three abroad, halved where the couple has children, through the online portal of the Ministry of the Interior, with the consulate of the district as the competent office abroad. The applicant for naturalisation applies after the period of residence which article 9 requires, with a lawful income over the three previous years and a clean criminal record in Italy and abroad. Both produce a certificate of Italian at level B1 of the Common European Framework issued by one of the four certifying bodies, pay the contribution of article 9-bis to the Italian State, and wait for a decision which the Ministry gives within twenty-four months, a term extended to thirty-six under article 9-ter. The decree takes effect only with the oath, sworn within six months of its notification before the mayor in Italy or the consular officer abroad, and a decree not followed by the oath lapses.

The declarations of article 4 need neither decree nor oath. The parents of a minor child of an Italian citizen declare before the consulate or the comune, within three years of the birth, and the child is Italian from the day after. A person whose Italian parentage was established late elects the citizenship within a year of the recognition. A foreigner born in Italy and resident there without interruption elects it within a year of majority. The pages on citizenship by declaration and on election explain each case.

How long it takes

The time of a file is the sum of the time of its parts, and the parts are not in the hands of the applicant in equal measure. The certificates from a comune arrive in weeks or in months, according to the office and to the age of the record. The British certificates arrive within days, the apostille within a few weeks, the Home Office letter within a month or two, and a search at The National Archives takes what the archive takes. The appointment at the consulate is the longest wait and the least predictable, and it is followed by the examination, by the confirmation of the comune and by the transcription of the certificates, which the comune makes in its own time. The applications by marriage and by residence have their statutory term of twenty-four to thirty-six months, and the declarations for minors are completed in the time of the transcription. What shortens a file is not haste but order: a line established before any certificate is requested, documents requested once in the form the office accepts, and the registers checked before the appointment, so that the office finds nothing to send back.

The first step

If you are not sure which of these routes is yours, send us the family line with the names, the dates and the places, and the documents you already hold. The written opinion tells you whether a route is open, which one, what it requires and in which order the documents are obtained, and where a case admits of no solution other than a judicial one it says so at the outset and introduces you to one of the lawyers with whom we work in partnership.

This guide is reviewed with the law in force and the practice of the consulates in the United Kingdom. The pages it refers to carry the detail of each procedure, the documents and the examples.