Italy's Citizenship by Descent Rules: Everything That Has Changed Since March 2025 Italy has fundamentally rewritten the rules for claiming citizenship through Italian ancestry. An emergency decree in March 2025, converted into law in May, introduced a two-generation limit that has shut the door on millions of potential applicants worldwide. Now, a landmark Constitutional Court ruling has confirmed the law will stand. Here is the complete picture, updated to March 2026. For generations, the principle of ius sanguinis gave the descendants of Italian emigrants a remarkable right: the ability to claim Italian citizenship regardless of how far back in the family tree the Italian ancestor appeared, provided the chain of citizenship had never been formally broken. A great-great-grandparent who left Palermo for Buenos Aires in 1890, or a Venetian glassmaker who sailed to New York in 1905, could be the starting point of a citizenship application filed by their descendants more than a century later. That era is now over. Italy's government moved with unusual speed in early 2025 to close what it described as a system open to abuse. The reform, introduced by emergency decree and subsequently ratified by parliament, limits citizenship by descent to the grandchildren of Italian citizens. It has generated a legal battle that has now reached Italy's highest court, and it has left millions of people who believed themselves entitled to an Italian passport facing a very different reality. This article sets out what the law says, what has changed, what the courts have decided, and what options, if any, remain for those affected. The Old System: No Generational Limit Under Italy's citizenship law of 1992 (Law No. 91), and the original citizenship law of 1912 that preceded it, the right to Italian citizenship by descent had no generational ceiling. Anyone who could demonstrate an unbroken line of Italian citizenship back to an ancestor who was alive on or after 17 March 1861 (the date of Italian unification) was in principle entitled to apply. The ancestor could not have voluntarily renounced or lost Italian citizenship before passing it to the next generation, but if the chain held, the distance in time was irrelevant. This made Italy's passport one of the most sought-after in the world. The combination of its visa-free access to the European Union, its Schengen membership, and the ease with which applicants in countries with large Italian diaspora communities (particularly Argentina, Brazil and the United States) could trace their ancestry created a boom in applications. Over the decade leading up to the reform, the number of Italian citizens registered as residing abroad grew by 40 per cent, rising from around 4.6 million to 6.4 million. At the time of the reform, more than 60,000 applications were pending at Italian consulates and municipalities alone. "The granting of citizenship is a serious matter. Unfortunately, over the years there have been abuses and requests that went a bit beyond the true interest in our country." - Antonio Tajani, Italian Foreign Minister The 2025 Reform: Law No. 74/2025 On 28 March 2025, the Italian Council of Ministers issued Decree-Law No. 36/2025, known informally as the Tajani Decree after Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who led the push for reform as part of his broader 'Ius Italiae' citizenship project. The decree went into immediate effect as emergency legislation. Following parliamentary review, it was converted into Law No. 74/2025 on 23 May 2025, entering into force the following day. The reform makes three fundamental changes to the ius sanguinis framework. First, it introduces for the first time a generational limit: applicants must have at least one parent or grandparent who held Italian citizenship. Descendants of great-grandparents or more distant Italian ancestors can no longer apply through the descent route. Second, it adds a citizenship exclusivity condition: the qualifying parent or grandparent must have held Italian citizenship exclusively at the relevant time, meaning they must not have held dual citizenship. This is a particularly restrictive condition, given that many Italian emigrants naturalised in their adopted countries while retaining Italian citizenship. Third, it establishes a new alternative route based on residency: a parent or adoptive parent who resided in Italy for at least two consecutive years after acquiring Italian citizenship, and before the applicant's birth, may also qualify the applicant. Tajani justified the reform on the grounds of both administrative necessity and principle. The application backlog had become unmanageable; some consulates were scheduling appointments years into the future. More philosophically, he argued that citizenship should reflect a genuine connection to Italy, not merely a genealogical fact. 'We want real Italians,' he said, 'not just citizens of convenience.' The Transitional Protection: Who Was Grandfathered In The reform provided an important transitional safeguard. Applications submitted to an Italian consulate, municipality or court by 11:59 PM Rome time on 27 March 2025, the day before the decree took effect, continue to be assessed under the previous rules. Applicants who had confirmed appointments booked before that deadline are similarly protected, even if the formal application was submitted later. For these applicants, the two-generation limit and the exclusivity condition do not apply. There is also a separate transitional window for minor children. Children who were under 18 on 24 May 2025 and have an Italian citizen parent may still obtain citizenship under a new 'by benefit of law' mechanism, provided their Italian parent submits a formal declaration of intent by 11:59 PM on 31 May 2026. If the child reaches the age of majority before the declaration is made, the responsibility for submitting it falls to the child themselves, by the same deadline. The foreign ministry confirmed the reform has no retroactive effect on those already holding Italian citizenship by descent. What Changed for Minor Children One of the less-discussed aspects of the reform concerns automatic citizenship transmission for children born abroad to Italian parents. Previously, children born abroad to an Italian citizen parent automatically acquired Italian citizenship at birth, iure sanguinis, with no further formality required. The 2025 reform ended this automatic transmission for children born after 24 May 2025. Under the new system, minor children born abroad to Italian citizens acquire citizenship 'by operation of law' rather than automatically at birth. The Italian citizen parent must submit a formal declaration of intent within one year of the child's birth (or of the date on which parentage is established, in adoption cases). If no declaration is made, children born after the reform who are over one year old must reside in Italy for at least two consecutive years following a parental declaration before acquiring citizenship. Minors who acquire Italian citizenship under these new provisions may renounce it at age 18, provided they hold another citizenship. The Constitutional Court Ruling: March 2026 The most significant development since the reform was passed came in March 2026, when Italy's Constitutional Court issued its initial ruling on legal challenges to Law No. 74/2025. On 12 March 2026, following a hearing at which the Tribunal of Turin had referred questions of constitutional legitimacy, the Court published a press release indicating it would reject the challenges. The Court declared the questions of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Turin court 'partially unfounded and partially inadmissible.' The state's legal counsel had successfully argued that descendants who had not officially claimed their citizenship by 27 March 2025 had, in effect, held only an expectation of citizenship rather than a fully vested right, and that the reform therefore did not amount to an unlawful retroactive deprivation. The full written judgment is expected in the coming weeks and will set out the court's detailed reasoning. "It was an extremely clear, harsh intervention. Descendants were born Italian citizens. If you are a citizen at birth, you have a right that nobody can touch." - Edoardo Mellone, citizenship lawyer, reacting to the ruling The ruling was described as a devastating blow for those who had hoped the court would uphold Italy's 160-year tradition of unconditional citizenship by descent. Legal representatives for applicants were blunt about its significance: for many descendants born abroad who had not filed by the March 2025 deadline, the broad jure sanguinis route is no longer available. The Constitutional Court's verdicts cannot be appealed within the Italian system. However, lawyers for descendants have not given up entirely. Separate proceedings are pending before the Joint Sections of the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest legal authority, whose opinion on points of law is considered authoritative and may offer a different avenue of challenge. Beyond Italy's borders, legal advisers are pointing clients toward potential claims at the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that the abruptness of the reform, which gave applicants essentially no transitional period before the deadline fell, may have violated the ECHR principle that restrictions on established rights require a reasonable transitional window. No such case is expected to be resolved before 2027 at the earliest. Notably, a July 2025 Constitutional Court ruling (Judgment No. 142/2025) had confirmed the legitimacy of the previous citizenship law, creating a complex legal picture in which the same court validated both the old and new regimes. Critics of the reform point to this apparent contradiction as grounds for continued challenge. Who Can Still Apply: The Current Rules Still eligible Applications filed before 27 March 2025: assessed under the old rules with no generational limit Grandchildren of Italian citizens: where the grandparent held or holds exclusively Italian citizenship Children of Italian citizens: where the parent held or holds exclusively Italian citizenship Residency-based route: where a parent resided in Italy for at least two consecutive years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the applicant's birth Minors under 18 as of 24 May 2025: if an Italian citizen parent submits a declaration of intent by 31 May 2026 Children born after 24 May 2025: if a parent submits a declaration within one year of birth No longer eligible (new applications) Great-grandchildren and beyond: the two-generation limit now excludes more distant descendants from new applications Descendants where the ancestor held dual citizenship: the exclusivity condition blocks many otherwise qualifying lines Maternal-line pre-1948 cases via consulate: the court route may still apply but consular route remains blocked for these cases The Dual Citizenship Exclusivity Problem One of the most practically significant and contested elements of the new law is the citizenship exclusivity condition. To qualify an applicant, the Italian parent or grandparent must have held Italian citizenship exclusively, meaning without simultaneously holding another nationality, at the relevant time (either currently, or at the time of their death). This creates an immediate problem for a large proportion of applicants. Many Italian emigrants who built lives abroad eventually naturalised in their adopted countries. In much of the 20th century, Italian law automatically stripped them of Italian citizenship when they did so (a rule that changed in 1992). If the qualifying ancestor naturalised abroad and lost Italian citizenship before it was passed to the next generation, the line of transmission was already broken under the old rules too, and the new law changes nothing in those cases. But for those whose ancestor held both citizenships simultaneously, the new exclusivity condition may block transmission even where the old rules would have allowed it. The practical application of this condition is still being worked through by Italian consulates and municipalities, and legal advisers are warning that the guidelines from the Foreign Ministry on implementation remain incomplete in some areas. Applicants in this category are strongly advised to seek specialist legal advice before proceeding. The 600-Euro Application Fee A separate measure worth noting: Italy's 2025 Budget Law introduced a fee of 600 euros for applications for the recognition of Italian citizenship. This applies to both administrative applications made at consulates or municipalities abroad, and to judicial applications made through the Italian courts. The fee, which did not previously exist for descent-based recognition, adds a further financial dimension to an already costly and document-intensive process. The Broader Context: Ius Italiae and Citizenship Reform The restrictions on ius sanguinis are part of a wider set of citizenship reforms being pursued under the Meloni government's 'Ius Italiae' framework, championed by Foreign Minister Tajani. The framework represents a deliberate rebalancing of Italy's citizenship philosophy: tighter rules on transmission by descent, potentially more accessible routes based on actual residence and integration. As part of this broader shift, a referendum was held in June 2025 on reducing the residency requirement for naturalisation from ten years to five years for foreign nationals who build their lives in Italy. The contrast is instructive: while the door for distant diaspora descendants is being closed, the government signalled openness to a faster path for people who actually live in Italy. The scale of the diaspora affected by these changes is substantial. The Italian government's own figures show that the number of Italian citizens registered abroad grew by 40 per cent in the decade before the reform. Most of those successfully claiming by descent in recent years were in Argentina, Brazil and the United States, where Italian emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries created enormous communities with deep Italian roots. For many in those communities, the reform represents not just a bureaucratic inconvenience but the severing of a connection with a country their families left generations ago. What to Do Now For those who filed before 27 March 2025, the message from legal advisers is straightforward: continue with the application under the old rules and ensure full documentation is in order. The transitional protection is solid. For those who missed the deadline and whose Italian ancestor is a great-grandparent or more distant, the options are now very limited. The Constitutional Court ruling of March 2026 has substantially reduced the prospects of successfully challenging the reform within Italy. Legal specialists are pointing to three remaining avenues: challenges at the Court of Cassation level, which may develop their own analysis of the reform's legality; the European Court of Human Rights, which may consider the adequacy of the transitional period; and the residency-based route, which remains open for those willing to establish genuine ties with Italy in the present rather than relying on the past. For those who do still qualify, the advice is to move quickly. Consular waiting times remain long, and documentary requirements, particularly for applications involving ancestors from before the First World War, can be substantial. The 600-euro application fee now applies across the board. Timeline of Key Events 17 March 1861 - Italian unification: the starting date for ius sanguinis eligibility under old rules 1992 - Law No. 91 modernised Italian citizenship law, still allowing unlimited generational descent 28 March 2025 - Decree-Law No. 36/2025 (Tajani Decree) issued; two-generation limit takes effect 27 March 2025 (11:59 PM Rome time) - Deadline for applications to be assessed under old rules 23 May 2025 - Parliamentary approval; Decree converted to Law No. 74/2025 24 May 2025 - Law No. 74/2025 enters into force June 2025 - Referendum on reducing naturalisation residency requirement from 10 to 5 years July 2025 - Constitutional Court Judgment No. 142/2025 validates the previous citizenship law 12 March 2026 - Constitutional Court rejects challenges to Law No. 74/2025; reform confirmed 31 May 2026 - Deadline for Italian parents to submit declarations for minor children   Updated 21 March 2026. First published 29 March 2025.