Italian dual citizenship for British citizens

A British citizen with an Italian parent or grandparent, or married to an Italian, asks two questions in one: whether the Italian citizenship is open to him, and whether taking it costs him the British one. The second has a short answer, because neither country requires a choice. The first has a longer one, because the law of 2025 has redrawn the circle of those who are Italian by descent, and because the recognition is a file of documents whose preparation decides the outcome. This guide answers both for the families who live in the United Kingdom, and refers to the pages which treat each point in detail.

Two citizenships, two laws

Italy has allowed its citizens to hold another citizenship since Law 91/1992 came into force on 16 August 1992. Before that date an Italian who voluntarily acquired a foreign citizenship lost the Italian one, which is why the naturalisation of an ancestor before 1992 breaks a line while a British passport taken afterwards does not. The United Kingdom has allowed dual citizenship throughout, and a British citizen who is recognised as Italian, or who acquires the Italian citizenship by marriage or by residence, keeps the British one without any formality and without informing the Home Office. Nothing in either law requires the person to choose, to renounce or to declare a preference, and a child born with both keeps both.

What each law asks is different. Italy asks that the status be established before any right is exercised: the citizenship by descent is recognised by the consulate or by a comune after the examination of the certificates of the line, the citizenship by marriage and by residence is granted by decree and takes effect with an oath, and until then the person is, for the Italian State, a foreigner. Britain asks nothing of the dual citizen beyond what it asks of everyone, with one practical rule on the passport to be shown at its border, which is set out below.

Who qualifies

The child of an Italian citizen is Italian from birth, under article 1 of Law 91/1992, and the status passes from parent to child without limit of generations, provided that no one in the line lost it before the birth of the next person. Since 28 March 2025 article 3-bis adds a condition for those born abroad who hold another citizenship, and almost every British descendant holds one by birth: they are Italian only if a parent or a grandparent held exclusively Italian citizenship on the day they were born, or at death if the death came first, or if a parent lived in Italy for two continuous years as an Italian before the birth, unless an application, an appointment or a court claim was already in place by 27 March 2025. A great-grandchild qualifies only through a parent or grandparent who meets one of the two conditions. In practice the Italian grandparent who came to Britain and never applied for British citizenship transmits the status to the grandchildren born while he lived, and the grandparent who naturalised before their birth does not, unless the parent in between was born and raised in Italy and meets the second condition on his own account. The page on citizenship by descent sets out the conditions, the protected positions and the examples, and the line which passes through a woman who gave birth before 1 January 1948 is treated in the page on the maternal line before 1948.

The spouse or civil partner of an Italian citizen applies for citizenship after three years of marriage if the couple lives in the United Kingdom, halved where there are children, with a certificate of Italian at level B1, a clean criminal record in both countries and the contribution to the Italian State, through the online portal of the Ministry of the Interior and the consulate of the district. The marriage must first be transcribed in Italy. The decree takes effect with the oath before the consular officer, and the page on citizenship by marriage describes the file. A British citizen who moves to Italy is naturalised after ten years of legal residence, reduced to two for the child or grandchild of an Italian citizen by birth whose line is closed under article 3-bis, a route which the page on citizenship by residence describes, with the residence permits it presupposes.

Children born in Britain

A child born in the United Kingdom to an Italian parent and a British one is British by birth, through the British parent, and is Italian by birth only if the Italian parent held exclusively Italian citizenship on the day of the birth, or had lived in Italy for two years as an Italian before it. An Italian parent born and raised in Italy meets the second condition whatever passport he holds at the birth, because the two years of residence are counted from any time of his life as an Italian. An Italian parent born abroad, who never lived in Italy and who took British citizenship before the child was born, under the Settlement Scheme or otherwise, no longer transmits the status at birth, and the child becomes Italian by the declaration of article 4, made by both parents before the consulate within three years of the birth, with no contribution to pay. Children who were minors on 24 May 2025 and whose parent was recognised under the protected positions may be declared until 31 May 2029. The birth is registered in Italy by the transcription of the British certificate through the consulate, in one of the four cases which the Consulate General in London distinguishes, and the child is then entered in the AIRE with the parent and obtains the passport. The pages on minors, on the declaration and on registering a birth cover each step, and the order of the three, which the consulate enforces, is the one in which they are listed.

What changes after recognition

An Italian citizen is a citizen of the European Union. He lives, works and studies in Italy and in the other member States without a visa and without a permit, which the British passport no longer allows since 2021, and his spouse and children who are not citizens of the Union follow him under the rules on the family members of EU citizens. In Britain nothing changes: the British citizenship, the right of abode, the vote, the pension and the tax position remain as they were, and the Italian citizenship adds obligations of its own rather than taking anything away. The recognised citizen who lives in the United Kingdom registers in the AIRE within ninety days, keeps the address current through the FAST IT portal, transcribes in Italy the marriage, the births and the divorces which occur in Britain, votes by post in the Italian elections, and holds the Italian documents under the name of the birth record, which Italian law does not change on marriage. The pages on the AIRE and the codice fiscale, on voting from abroad and on names describe them. Tax residence is decided by the facts and by the Convention between the two countries, not by the citizenship, and a resident of the United Kingdom registered in the AIRE is not taxed in Italy on his British income.

Travelling on two passports

A dual citizen shows at each border the passport of the country he enters. Into Italy and the Schengen area the Italian passport or the electronic identity card, which exempts him from the ninety days in one hundred and eighty, from the Entry/Exit System and from the European travel authorisation which apply to British citizens. Into the United Kingdom the British passport, because a British citizen who presents a foreign passport at the British border is treated as a foreigner unless he proves the right of abode, and the Home Office issues a certificate of entitlement for that purpose at a cost which exceeds that of a passport. The airline checks the document of the country of destination, so that a person who flies from London to Rome shows the Italian document at check-in and the British one on the way back. The Italian document must be valid: the paper identity card no longer serves for travel since August 2026, and a passport is issued only to a citizen whose registers are in order, which the guide on how to obtain an Italian passport explains.

The first step

If you have an Italian parent or grandparent, or an Italian spouse, send us the names, the dates and the places of the family, the citizenship each person held at the birth of the next, and the documents you already have. The written opinion tells you whether the Italian citizenship is open to you, by which route, what the file must contain and in which order the documents are obtained. The guide to Italian citizenship sets out all the routes in one page.

This guide is reviewed with the law in force in both countries and with the practice of the consulates in the United Kingdom.