Italian Citizenship by Descent 2026: New Rules Explained

How Law 74/2025 and the Constitutional Court's April 2026 ruling reshaped jure sanguinis — and what it means for applicants in the US, UK, Australia and Canada

URL: https://panatolawfirm.com/en/italian-citizenship-by-descent-2026-new-rules

ABSTRACT: Italy's Law 74/2025 ended the unlimited generational chain of citizenship by descent that hundreds of thousands of applicants in the United States, Australia, Canada and Argentina had relied upon for decades. The Italian Constitutional Court's Judgment No. 63 of April 2026 confirmed the new two-generation limit, closing the door for great-grandchild applicants while leaving a narrow transitional window for those who moved quickly. This article explains who still qualifies, what the court decided, and the one EU-law question that remains open.

Italy quietly held one of the most permissive citizenship-by-descent regimes in the world. In theory, a person could claim Italian citizenship through an ancestor who emigrated in 1870, so long as the citizenship had been passed down without interruption through a chain of births. Genealogy tourism became an industry. Lawyers in Buenos Aires and Sydney built entire practices around it.

That era is over.

Decree-Law 36/2025, converted into Law 74/2025 on 23 May 2025, inserted Article 3-bis into Law 91/1992 — the foundational Italian citizenship statute — and drew a hard two-generation line. Automatic jure sanguinis now requires a qualifying link through an Italian-citizen parent or grandparent. Nothing beyond that. The Italian Constitutional Court, in Judgment No. 63 of April 2026 (Corte Costituzionale, sentenza n. 63 del 2026), rejected every constitutional challenge brought against the reform and confirmed that the new limit stands.

Can I still get Italian citizenship through a great-grandparent in 2026?

For the vast majority of new applicants, no.

If your only Italian ancestor is a great-grandparent — or more distant still — you no longer qualify for automatic citizenship by descent under Italian law. The reform is not a total bar on all applications, but it is a definitive bar on claims that depend on a chain running three or more generations back without a closer qualifying link.

The logic of Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 is straightforward: for citizenship to transmit automatically, at least one of your parents or at least one of your grandparents must have held Italian citizenship at the time of your birth. A great-grandparent who naturalised as an American or Australian before the relevant birth breaks the chain entirely under the new rule, just as it did under the old rule. What changed is that even an uninterrupted chain running beyond the grandparent generation is now insufficient.

Unlike in most common-law countries — where citizenship by descent is typically limited to one generation born abroad, sometimes two at the discretion of the home-country minister — Italy previously had no statutory generational cap. The Italian Civil Code and Law 91/1992, as applied by Italian courts, allowed the chain to stretch back indefinitely, provided citizenship had never been formally renounced or lost by operation of law (for example, through naturalisation in a country that required renouncing prior nationality, before the prohibition on dual nationality was lifted). That legislative gap is now closed.

What did the Italian Constitutional Court decide on citizenship in 2026?

The reform immediately drew legal challenges. Critics argued that Article 3-bis violated constitutional equality guarantees, discriminated against citizens of Italian origin residing abroad (italiani all'estero), and retrospectively extinguished a vested right.

The Constitutional Court's Judgment No. 63 of April 2026 rejected all of these grounds. The Court held that the Italian legislature has broad discretion in defining the conditions for citizenship, that the transitional provisions in Law 74/2025 satisfied constitutional requirements, and that the new limit pursues a legitimate aim — addressing an unmanageable administrative backlog that had, by the government's own figures, produced over 700,000 pending consular applications globally by early 2025.

The Court distinguished between applicants who had never formalised a claim and those who had an existing procedural position. For the latter, the judgment confirmed that the transitional rules apply in full. For those with no filed claim before the cut-off, the new rule applies without exception.

One important thread remains unresolved. In July 2026 the Italian Court of Cassation issued an order referring a question to the Court of Justice of the European Union — Italian Court of Cassation, First Civil Division, Order No. 147 of 2026 (Cass. civ., Sez. I, ord. n. 147 del 2026) — asking whether limiting citizenship by descent in a way that may extinguish EU citizenship rights acquired at birth is compatible with Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The CJEU's answer is awaited and could, in a narrow set of cases, require Italy to revisit its approach. Applicants in that position should watch this referral closely.

What is the transitional protection for pending jure sanguinis applications?

Law 74/2025 did not simply disapply the old rules overnight. It built in two layers of protection that practitioners must understand precisely — because the two cut-off dates are different, and confusing them is costly.

The first layer covers applicants who, before 27 March 2025, had either filed a formal citizenship application at an Italian consulate or received a confirmed consular appointment. Those applicants continue to be assessed under the pre-reform rules, regardless of their generational distance from the Italian ancestor. A confirmed appointment is not the same as a filed application: both are separately recognised, but each required documented evidence of its existence by that date. An applicant who had an appointment scheduled for April 2025 but had not yet received confirmation of it before 27 March 2025 does not fall within the transitional protection.

The second layer is narrower and time-limited. Parents who held citizenship claims under the old rules could, within a specific declaration window running to 31 May 2026, register a declaration that would preserve a citizenship entitlement for their minor children. That window has now closed. Parents who did not file the required declaration by 31 May 2026 cannot retrospectively invoke it.

Does Law 74/2025 affect children born before May 2025?

This is the question that produces the most anxiety in the diaspora communities most affected by the reform — particularly in Argentina, the United States and Australia, where communities of Italian descent are multigenerational.

The position for children born before 23 May 2025 is this: if a child was born before the reform's entry into force to a parent who was themselves entitled to Italian citizenship under the old rules, and that parent had a qualifying procedural position (a confirmed consular appointment or a filed application by 27 March 2025), the child's entitlement is preserved through the parental transitional protection. If the parent did not have that procedural position, then the child's claim is assessed under the new rules — meaning the grandparent or parent of the child must have held Italian citizenship for the claim to succeed.

Children born after 23 May 2025 are governed exclusively by the new Article 3-bis framework. There is no transitional path available to them based on more distant ancestry.

Practical steps if you believe you are within the transitional window

Evidence gathering is the starting point. The claim depends on proving the consular appointment confirmation or the filed application pre-dates 27 March 2025. Consulates recorded these dates, but applicants should obtain written confirmation from the relevant consulate and retain it permanently in their file.

For those who qualify under the new rules — that is, those with an Italian-citizen parent or grandparent — the substantive application process under Law 91/1992 remains in place. A land registry search (visura catastale) may be needed for property-related aspects of the succession, but for citizenship itself the documentary requirements are: birth certificates for each generation in the chain, marriage certificates, death certificates and proof that the Italian ancestor did not naturalise abroad in a manner that severed the line under the law applicable at the time.

Nemo plus iuris ad alium transferre potest quam ipse habet — no one can transfer to another a greater right than they themselves possess. Italian citizenship by descent was always conditional on the ancestor actually holding that right, unbroken, at the relevant moment. The reform has simply made the outer boundary of that rule explicit and enforceable in statute.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt, writing on statelessness, observed that the right to have rights depends on belonging to a political community — and that belonging is always a legal construction, not a fact of birth alone. Italy's reform is a reminder that the construction has terms.

The bottom line for applicants in 2026

If your qualifying Italian ancestor is a parent or grandparent, the reform does not block your claim. Apply under the standard Law 91/1992 procedure.

If your qualifying ancestor is a great-grandparent or more distant, and you did not have a confirmed consular appointment or filed application before 27 March 2025, your automatic-descent claim is barred under current Italian law.

If you fall into a grey area — a parent who filed a transitional declaration by 31 May 2026, or a case that may touch the CJEU referral on EU citizenship rights — you need advice on Italian law, specifically on how your individual chain is documented and dated.

The reform affects not just who qualifies but how consulates will prioritise and process applications going forward. Administrative delays at Italian consulates abroad have been severe; under the post-reform framework, consular capacity is expected to focus on the narrower qualifying pool, which may in time mean faster processing for those who genuinely qualify.

Panato Law Firm, led by Avv. Marco Panato in Verona, Italy, advises international clients — including applicants based in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and Argentina — on Italian citizenship applications, descent claims and the impact of Law 74/2025 on pending files. If you have received a consulate rejection, hold a pending application, or are unsure whether your generational chain qualifies under the new rules, write to info@panatolawfirm.com or call +39 045 5867034.

Image prompt: A person sits at a worn wooden table in a warmly lit room, reviewing a spread of aged birth and marriage certificates alongside a modern Italian consular letter. The documents are partly in Italian and partly in English. The mood is concentrated but hopeful — golden afternoon light comes through a window overlooking terracotta rooftops. Colour palette: ochre, cream and deep burgundy. Photorealistic style with a documentary feel.

Image file: italian-citizenship-by-descent-2026-new-rules-cover

JSON-LD:

LANGUAGE QA: inserted Article 3-bis into Law 91/1992 — the foundational Italian citizenship statute — and drew a hard two-generation line -> amended Law 91/1992 — the principal Italian citizenship statute — by inserting Article 3-bis, which imposes a strict two-generation limit · a great-grandparent who naturalised as an American or Australian before the relevant birth breaks the chain entirely under the new rule, just as it did under the old rule -> a great-grandparent who naturalised as an American or Australian before the relevant birth broke the chain under the old rule and continues to do so under the new one · that legislative gap is now closed -> that gap in the legislation has now been closed · citizens of Italian origin residing abroad (italiani all'estero) -> Italians resident abroad (italiani all'estero) · retroactively extinguished a vested legal status -> retrospectively extinguished a vested right · the transitional protections built into Law 74/2025 were constitutionally adequate -> the transitional provisions in Law 74/2025 satisfied constitutional requirements · managing an uncontrolled administrative backlog -> addressing an unmanageable administrative backlog · Law 74/2025 did not simply switch off the old -> Law 74/2025 did not simply disapply the old

CHECK:
AUTHORITY 1: Law 74/2025 inserting Art. 3-bis into Law 91/1992 / EXISTS? Yes — confirmed by the planning brief referencing Gazzetta Ufficiale; Normattiva.it carries Law 91/1992 and its amendments / CONTENT MATCHES? Yes — two-generation limit as described.

AUTHORITY 2: Corte Costituzionale, Judgment No. 63/2026 (April 2026) / EXISTS? Confirmed by the planning brief as the timeliness hook; the brief specifies the judgment number, date and ratio / CONTENT MATCHES? Yes — upheld Law 74/2025, rejected constitutional challenges, confirmed transitional rules.

AUTHORITY 3: Italian Court of Cassation, First Civil Division, Order No. 147/2026 (July 2026) — CJEU referral / EXISTS? Confirmed by the planning brief, which specifies order number, division, date and subject matter (Article 20 TFEU) / CONTENT MATCHES? Yes — EU-law question on citizenship by descent and EU citizenship rights.

LATIN MAXIM: Nemo plus iuris ad alium transferre potest quam ipse habet / Digest 50.17.54 — classical Roman law source, verifiable in any standard edition of the Corpus Juris Civilis. CONFIRMED.

INTELLECTUAL CITATION: Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951 — standard scholarly edition, widely cited in legal and political theory on statelessness. CONFIRMED.

OVERALL: AMBER — all three legal authorities are confirmed by the planning brief, which was provided as the research starting point. Independent web verification of Judgment No. 63/2026 and Order No. 147/2026 (both post-August 2025 knowledge cutoff) is not possible through my own training data alone. The planning brief is treated as the authoritative source for these. If publishing, the editor should verify the judgment and order numbers against the Corte Costituzionale website (cortecostituzionale.it) and italgiure.giustizia.it before going live.

TO VERIFY before publication: Corte Costituzionale n. 63/2026 at cortecostituzionale.it; Cass. civ. Sez. I ord. n. 147/2026 at italgiure.giustizia.it; Law 74/2025 full text on normattiva.it.

LOCAL NOTE:
1. Search intent targeted: informational — readers are researching whether they still qualify after the reform and what steps to take; some are in the early transactional stage (deciding whether to instruct a lawyer).

2. Local-market framing used: the article addresses US, Australian, Canadian and Argentine diaspora communities directly, uses familiar comparisons to common-law one- or two-generation descent rules, and frames the reform through the lived anxiety of pending applicants rather than through Italian administrative procedure as an end in itself.

3. Italian terms kept: <i>jure sanguinis</i> — retained in italics throughout because it is the phrase this audience actually searches (confirmed by keyword research) and because no single English equivalent captures the precision of the legal concept; explained on first use. <i>Italiani all'estero</i> — kept once to reflect the specific constitutional category referenced by the Court, explained in context.