New Italian citizenship law 2025

A family’s position depends on the law in force on the day of each event in its history: the birth of the ancestor, his naturalisation, the birth of the next generation, the marriage of a daughter. This chronology gives the dates which decide those positions, from the first unified code to the decisions of the summer of 2026. It is kept current and the date of the last review appears at the top of the page.

• 1 January 1866 The civil code of 1865 comes into force. A child is Italian if the father is Italian. A citizen who acquires a foreign citizenship loses the Italian one. The civil registers open in most of Italy, after those of the former Kingdom of Naples, opened in 1809.
• 13 June 1912 Law 555 on citizenship. Citizenship passes from the father, a child born abroad in a country which gives citizenship by birth keeps the Italian one and may renounce it at majority, a citizen who naturalises abroad loses citizenship together with the minor children who live with him, and a woman who marries a foreigner follows the citizenship of the husband. This is the law under which the great Italian emigration took place, and it governs the files of most families in Britain for the generations born before 1992.
• 1 January 1948 The Constitution comes into force, with the equality of the sexes. The date divides the maternal lines: citizenship passes through the mother only to children born after it, in the administrative practice.
• 16 April 1975 Constitutional Court, judgment 87. The loss of citizenship by a woman who marries a foreigner is unconstitutional, with effect for marriages from 1 January 1948. Law 151 of the same year, in article 219, allows the women who lost citizenship by marriage to reacquire it by declaration.
• 9 February 1983 Constitutional Court, judgment 30. The child of an Italian mother is Italian by birth, for births after 1 January 1948. Law 123 of 21 April 1983 confirms it and admits dual citizenship for those children.
• 8 April 1991 Circular K.28.1 of the Ministry of the Interior sets the administrative procedure for the recognition of citizenship by descent, the four facts to be proved and the documents. The consulates still apply it.
• 16 August 1992 Law 91 of 5 February 1992 comes into force and replaces the law of 1912. Acquiring a foreign citizenship no longer causes the loss of the Italian one. Reacquisition is opened to former citizens. The implementing regulation follows with Presidential Decree 572 of 12 October 1993.
• 25 February 2009 Court of Cassation, United Sections, judgment 4466. The descendants of a woman who married a foreigner before 1948 can obtain a judicial declaration of their citizenship. The 1948 cases begin in the courts.
• 4 June 2010 Italy’s withdrawal from chapter I of the Strasbourg Convention of 1963 takes effect. The acquisition of the citizenship of the States party to it no longer causes the loss of Italian citizenship.
• 4 December 2018 Law 132 of 1 December 2018. Applications by marriage and by residence require Italian at level B1, the contribution to the State rises to 250 euro, the Ministry has forty-eight months to decide. Decree-law 130 of 2020, converted by Law 173 of 18 December 2020, brings the term to twenty-four months, extendable to thirty-six, for applications lodged from 20 December 2020.
• January 2022 The migration of the comuni into the national population register, the ANPR, is complete. The consulates issue and renew passports only to persons who appear in it, and the Italians abroad whose births were never transcribed discover that they are missing.
• 3 October 2024 Circular 43347 of the Ministry of the Interior instructs the consulates and the comuni to refuse recognition where the ancestor naturalised abroad while the next person in the line was a minor living with him, following the judgments of the Court of Cassation of 2023 and 2024. The refusals known as the minor issue begin.
• 1 January 2025 The consular fee for an application for recognition by an adult rises to 600 euro, under the Budget Law for 2025, Law 207 of 30 December 2024.
• 28 March 2025 Decree-law 36. Article 3-bis is inserted in Law 91/1992: a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship unless an application was lodged, or a court claim filed, by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025, or a parent or grandparent holds exclusively Italian citizenship, or a parent lived in Italy for two years before the birth. The decree applies from the day of its publication.
• 24 May 2025 Law 74 of 23 May 2025 converts the decree with amendments and comes into force. It adds the condition of the appointment communicated by 27 March 2025, replaces the condition of the parent born in Italy with the condition of exclusive citizenship of a parent or grandparent, inserts the declaration for minor children of citizens by birth in article 4, limits article 14 to children resident in Italy, reduces to two years the residence required for the naturalisation of descendants, reopens reacquisition for those who lost citizenship before 1992, and sets the transitional declaration for minors until 31 May 2026.
• 28 May 2025 Circular 26185 of the Ministry of the Interior gives the comuni the instructions on the new law, among them the reading of the condition of exclusive citizenship at the moment of the applicant’s birth.
• 8 and 9 June 2025 The referendum to reduce from ten to five the years of residence for naturalisation does not reach the quorum. The ten years stand.
• 1 July 2025 The declaration of reacquisition opens for former citizens born in Italy, or resident in Italy for two years, who lost citizenship under the law of 1912 by 15 August 1992. It closes on 31 December 2027.
• 31 July 2025 Constitutional Court, judgment 142. The questions raised by the courts of Bologna, Rome, Milan and Florence against the unlimited transmission of citizenship by descent under the law before the reform are inadmissible or unfounded: the criteria of acquisition belong to Parliament.
• 30 December 2025 Law 199, the Budget Law for 2026. The declaration for minor children of citizens by birth can be made within three years of the birth instead of one, and from 1 January 2026 it is exempt from the contribution of 250 euro.
• 19 February 2026 Law 11 of 19 January 2026 comes into force. Until 31 December 2028 each consulate accepts, each year, a number of applications for recognition equal to the procedures it concluded the year before, with a minimum of one hundred. From 1 January 2029 the applications of adults resident abroad are lodged by post with a central office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, with a decision within thirty-six months.
• 28 February 2026 Law 26 converts decree-law 200 of 31 December 2025 and moves the transitional deadline for the declaration for minors from 31 May 2026 to 31 May 2029.
• 30 April 2026 Constitutional Court, judgment 63, decided on 11 March. Article 3-bis is retroactive but does not revoke anything: for a person whose citizenship was never recognised it creates an original bar to acquisition, justified by the requirement of an effective link with Italy. The questions raised by the court of Turin are unfounded.
• 23 July 2026 Constitutional Court, order 147, decided on 9 June. The questions raised by the courts of Mantua and Campobasso on the retroactivity of article 3-bis are referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union, case C-816/26, and the proceedings are suspended. The rule remains in force.
• 26 July 2026 Court of Cassation, United Sections, judgment 24045. A child born abroad to an Italian parent in a country which gives citizenship by birth held both citizenships from birth and kept the Italian one when the parent naturalised. Article 3-bis does not apply to court claims filed before 27 March 2025. Circular 65050 of 10 August 2026 opens the re-examination of the refusals based on the minor issue.
• September 2026 The courts begin to suspend the pending cases on the retroactivity of article 3-bis until the Court of Justice decides. Catanzaro adjourns to 7 June 2027. Avellino raises new questions, one of them referred at the same time to the Constitutional Court and to Luxembourg.

What is pending

The Court of Justice of the European Union has the question whether Union law allows a rule which bars the acquisition of citizenship for persons born abroad before its entry into force. No date for its decision is known, and the Italian courts expect it in 2027 or 2028. Until then article 3-bis applies in full, in the consulates, in the comuni and in the courts, and the applications which meet its conditions proceed. The United Sections of the Court of Cassation have a further question before them on articles 7, 8, 9 and 12 of the law of 1912, remitted in July 2025, which concerns the lines of the emigrants who naturalised before 1992 and not the retroactivity of the reform.

If an event in your family history falls on one of these dates, or close to it, the date decides the file. Send us the family line with the years, and we tell you under which law each generation is examined.