Requirements, the 2025 reform and the routes still open, from consulate to court to re-examination after a refusal.
Italian citizenship by descent is not granted to you. It is recognised: the Italian state confirms a status you have held since the day you were born, or finds that you never held it at all. That distinction decides what you must prove, which authority decides, what happens if the answer is no, and whether a change in the law can reach back and take the status away.
Jure sanguinis, jus sanguinis, Italian citizenship sanguinis, Italian citizenship by blood, Italy citizenship by ancestry: all describe the rule in article 1 of Law 91/1992, under which the child of an Italian father or mother is Italian by birth. On jus sanguinis Italy was, until March 2025, the most generous country in Europe, transmitting citizenship down the generations with no limit at all.
That is no longer the position. Since March 2025 an Italian nationality by descent claim must clear three separate tests: whether the chain from your ancestor to you was ever broken; the generational limit of 2025, now referred to the EU Court of Justice; and which of three procedural routes is open to you. How descent compares with the marriage and residency routes is set out on our citizenship overview.
Decree-Law 36/2025, converted with substantial amendments by Law 74/2025, added article 3-bis to the 1992 law. Its operative sentence is blunt: a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship. Not to have lost it: never to have acquired it. It applies to people born before it came into force, and is retroactive by design.
Five conditions rescue a claim. Three are transitional, for people already in the queue on 27 March 2025; two are substantive and are the only ones open to someone starting today. The conversion law changed those two fundamentally. The decree anchored eligibility to birthplace (a parent or grandparent born in Italy); Parliament deleted the grandparent letter and replaced birthplace with exclusivity: an ascendant of the first or second degree who holds, or held at death, only Italian citizenship. A grandfather born in Naples who became American in 1954 does not save the claim, however Italian his birth certificate looks.
Article 3-bis sits on top of a much older body of law, and does not replace it. Even where a condition applies, transmission must have worked at every step. Italian descent citizenship cases are won and lost on that chain.
The starting point is the ancestor: consular practice requires an Italian-born ancestor born after 17 March 1861, or alive after that date. The classic break is naturalisation: under the 1912 law an Italian who voluntarily took a foreign citizenship lost the Italian one, and if that happened before the next child in the line was born, the line stops. The exact date of naturalisation (the certificate, not the petition) is the single most important document in the file.
From 2023, and through Interior Ministry circular 43347 of October 2024, a child born abroad as a dual citizen was treated as losing Italian citizenship when the cohabiting parent naturalised during the child's minority. That reading broke tens of thousands of lines.
It has been reversed. The Joint Chambers of the Court of Cassation, judgment 24045 of 26 July 2026, held that article 7 of the 1912 law governs dual citizenship at birth on its own: a minor born abroad in a ius soli country to an Italian parent keeps Italian citizenship even if the parent later naturalises. Circular 0065050 of 10 August 2026 aligned the Ministry, with two limits: it covers only naturalisations between 1 July 1912 and 15 August 1992, and reopens refused files only where the refusal rested exclusively on the old reading.
Before 1 January 1948 Italian women could not transmit citizenship. A child born to an Italian mother before that date is refused by consulates and comuni, but the right survives and is established in court: these are the 1948 cases. An Italian citizenship through great grandmother claim is very often a 1948 case before it is anything else.
Under the Italy–Argentina agreement of 1971, in force from 12 September 1974, a national of either country who acquires the other citizenship keeps the first, but its rights are suspended. An ancestor who naturalised in Argentina after that date kept Italian citizenship only if they opted into the agreement at the time.
This deserves a straight answer rather than an encouraging one. Before 2025, Italian citizenship great grandparents claims were the backbone of the practice. Article 3-bis ended that: if you were born abroad and hold another citizenship, a great grandfather born in Italy is now, by itself, worth nothing. Italian citizenship through great grandfather and through great grandmother lines are treated the same way. Eligibility stopped being measured in generations: the law now looks at your parent and grandparent, and what they held.
What is not available is the route the decree originally offered: a grandparent born in Italy. Parliament removed it in conversion. Guidance written between March and May 2025 may still present it as law; it never became law.
If none of the three applies, the descent route is closed and the question becomes which other route is open. With an Italian-born parent or grandparent, naturalisation after two years of legal residence in Italy is now available and often the realistic answer. With only a great grandparent, the ordinary residence route or an entry route into Italy is where the conversation goes.
Anyone telling you that Italy jure sanguinis is settled has stopped reading too early. In judgment 142/2025 the Constitutional Court upheld the old unlimited regime; in judgment 63/2026 it upheld the new one. Most commentary stops there. But on 23 July 2026, by order 147/2026, the same Court referred article 3-bis to the Court of Justice of the European Union, asking whether it is compatible with EU citizenship rules.
In practice: article 3-bis remains in force and is applied by consulates and comuni; the reference does not suspend it. But its compatibility with EU law is now a live question, which changes how a marginal file should be handled today. Meanwhile, in order 13818/2026, the Court of Cassation restated that citizenship by descent is a permanent, imprescriptible right from birth, and held that where the administration itself blocks you from filing (here, a frozen appointment system), that is enough to go to court.
Whether you are an Italian citizen by descent is not a question anyone will answer in advance. Consulates give no eligibility advice, examine the file only after payment, and do not refund the fee if the answer is no.
If you live abroad, the consulate for your district decides; appointments are booked on Prenot@mi and are personal. Some posts now require the full file by post, with the appointment as the filing date. If you live in Italy, the comune where you are registered decides. An adult application costs €600, collected in local currency and payable whatever the outcome; an incomplete file is rejected and needs a new appointment and payment.
Law 11 of 19 January 2026 has rebuilt the procedure. From 1 January 2029, adult applications from abroad will go by post to a single office of the Foreign Ministry in Rome, with a 36-month time limit. Until the end of 2028, each consulate can accept each year no more adult applications than it concluded the year before (minimum 100). Some posts, such as Sydney, have already closed new bookings citing that rule. If your file is ready and your post still has capacity, the case for filing now is stronger than ever.
Court proceedings are not a fallback for a weak file: they are the ordinary route for whole categories. Pre-1948 maternal lines have always gone this way. Files blocked by unavailable appointments are supported by order 13818/2026, and arguably more so where a statutory cap has closed the list. And under judgment 24045/2026, article 3-bis does not apply to court claims filed before 27 March 2025.
The newest route, and the most time-sensitive. Circular 0065050 of August 2026 says that where a file was refused on the superseded reading of articles 7 and 12, you should not file a new application but ask for the original to be re-examined. The difference is decisive: a new application is judged under today's law, article 3-bis included; a re-examination under the law in force when the original was filed.
Two cautions. The circular covers only 1912–1992 naturalisations and refusals based exclusively on the old reading. And reopening a file is not risk-free: in our reading, the limit on raising new grounds applies fully only after a court annulment, so a narrow refusal can come back wider. That is a reason to frame the request precisely, not to leave it alone.
If you are recognised as Italian and your children were born abroad with another citizenship, they are not automatically Italian. Under article 4(1-bis) of the 1992 law, parents can declare that the child acquires citizenship. The 2026 Budget Law extended the deadline from one to three years from birth (or adoption) and abolished the €250 fee, from 1 January 2026, without refunds for earlier filings.
For children already minors on 24 May 2025 whose parent falls under the transitional letters, the deadline has moved to 31 May 2029 (Law 26/2026); guidance still citing 2026 is out of date. Note one consequence: acquisition by declaration takes effect from the day after the conditions are met, while recognition by descent reaches back to birth. Two children in the same family can be Italian from different dates.
Not every file needs one. A clean line, an ancestor who never naturalised, complete records and a consulate with appointments is an administrative exercise. An Italian citizenship by descent lawyer changes the outcome in narrower, identifiable cases.
We work from primary sources: the 1912 and 1992 laws, ministerial circulars and the decisions themselves, not summaries. Where the law is unsettled we say so and explain both readings. Avv. Marco Mesina, a member of the Milan Bar (Ordine degli Avvocati di Milano), coordinates administrative files and court cases, including 1948 cases, re-examination requests and claims where appointments proved unobtainable. And we look past the passport: most people seeking recognition are planning a move, and the tax position of that move is settled by when and where you register, a decision far cheaper to take before arrival than after.
Yes, but not on the old terms. The principle in article 1 of Law 91/1992 is untouched. What changed is that a person born abroad holding another citizenship is now considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship unless one of the five conditions in article 3-bis applies. Applications and appointments predating 27 March 2025 are still decided under the previous law.
Only indirectly. The claim now depends on your parent or grandparent: whether one of them holds or held at death exclusively Italian citizenship, or whether a parent lived in Italy for two continuous years after acquiring citizenship and before your birth. If neither is true, the descent route is closed regardless of how well documented the great grandparent generation is.
The Court of Cassation has repeatedly described the status as permanent and imprescriptible, existing from birth. But article 3-bis operates by treating the status as never acquired in the first place, which is a different mechanism from expiry, and it is precisely that construction which is now before the Court of Justice of the European Union.
An Italian ancestor born after 17 March 1861 or alive after that date; an unbroken chain of transmission, checked at every naturalisation, at the 1948 line if the chain passes through a woman, and against any bilateral agreement such as the Italian-Argentine one; and, for anyone applying now, one of the article 3-bis conditions. Documents for every birth, marriage, divorce and death in the line, apostilled and translated.
It depends entirely on the ground of refusal. If it rested exclusively on the superseded reading of articles 7 and 12 of the 1912 law, circular 0065050 of 2026 opens a request for re-examination of the original application, decided under the law as it stood when that application was filed. If it rested on something else, the question is whether to challenge it in court. What you should not do reflexively is file a fresh application, which would be judged under today's rules.
Not necessarily. The Constitutional Court expressly left this position open at paragraph 9.1 of judgment 63/2026, and the Court of Cassation held in order 13818/2026 that obstruction by the administration itself founds standing to sue. It is an argument to be made in court, on evidence of the attempts made, not something a consulate will accept over the counter.
The two halves of that question pull in opposite directions. A reference to the Court of Justice takes years and does not suspend article 3-bis in the meantime, so waiting buys no protection. Meanwhile consulates are working under an annual ceiling until the end of 2028, after which adult applications move to a central office in Rome with a thirty-six month statutory term. For a file that already qualifies, waiting costs capacity. For a file that depends on the outcome in Luxembourg, the decision should be taken on the specific facts.
The statutory term has never been the binding constraint. In the Americas the wait has historically been measured in years and driven by appointment availability rather than by processing. From 2029 the term for adult applications from abroad becomes thirty-six months, running from the date the file is posted to Rome. Court proceedings run to their own timetable and are not necessarily slower than the queue.
No. Italy permits dual citizenship, and recognition by descent does not require you to renounce anything. Whether your own country takes the same view is a separate question governed by its law, not Italy's.
No. Tax residence follows residence, not citizenship. But almost everyone who pursues recognition is thinking about a move, and where a substitute tax regime is in play the timing of registration matters a great deal.
Avv. Marco Mesina
Founder, Move to Dolce Vita · Avvocato, Milan Bar (Ordine degli Avvocati di Milano)
Marco is an Italian tax lawyer who advises individuals and families relocating to Italy on tax regimes, residency, citizenship, real estate and succession planning. Before founding Move to Dolce Vita he worked at Watson Farley & Williams, Withers and Deloitte in Milan.