Italian Citizenship by Descent in 2026: Who Still Qualifies After the Reform

If you started researching Italian citizenship by descent a few years ago, almost everything you read is now out of date. Italy changed the rules in 2025, and in 2026 its highest court confirmed the change. The path is narrower than it was. For a lot of American families, it is still open.

This guide explains the law as it actually stands in 2026: what changed, who is still eligible, and how to figure out which group you fall into without guessing.

What changed in 2025

For most of the last century, Italy recognized citizenship down an unbroken bloodline with no generation limit. A great-great-grandparent born in Italy could, in the right circumstances, be enough.

That changed with Decree-Law 36/2025, published on March 28, 2025 and later confirmed as Law 74/2025. The reform added a new rule to Italy's citizenship statute that does two things:

• It caps descent at two generations. The Italian-born ancestor you claim through generally has to be a parent or grandparent, not a great-grandparent or further back.
• It adds an "exclusively Italian" condition. That parent or grandparent must have held only Italian citizenship (not dual citizenship) at the key moment in your line. We'll come back to this, because it sinks more cases than people expect.

Then, in March 2026, the Italian Constitutional Court reviewed the cap and upheld it (Sentenza 63/2026). So this is not a temporary measure that might be reversed shortly. For new applicants, two generations is the law. (A few related questions about how the reform applies to older judicial claims are still before Italy's Court of Cassation, but the core cap is settled.)

Who still qualifies

The reform narrowed the door; it didn't close it. You are likely still in the conversation if:

• Your parent was born in Italy, or
• Your grandparent was born in Italy,

…and that ancestor was an Italian citizen at the moment citizenship passed to the next person in your line.

A clean example: your grandfather was born in Italy, your mother was born in the United States while he was still an Italian citizen, and you were born after that. That is the most common shape of a qualifying case, and it's an administrative process, handled through Italian channels, no court required.

There's also a separate route, the 1948 maternal-line case, for families whose Italian line runs through a woman with a child born before January 1, 1948. It works differently (it goes through an Italian court) and it carries its own conditions. We cover it honestly in its own article, because there's a lot of outdated information floating around about it.

Who no longer qualifies

This is the hard part, and it's where being straight with you matters more than being encouraging.

• Great-grandparent lines. If the nearest Italian-born ancestor is your great-grandparent or further back, and you didn't already have an application on file before the cutoff, the two-generation cap almost certainly closes the standard descent route.
• Lines where the ancestor became a dual citizen at the wrong time. If your Italian grandparent naturalized as a U.S. citizen before your parent was born, the line may have been broken under Italian law, even by a margin of months. The "exclusively Italian" condition is strict, and naturalization dates decide it.

If either of these describes your family, you deserve to know early, before you spend months and money chasing a document trail that doesn't lead anywhere.

The one date that grandfathered some people in

There's an important exception. If your application, administrative or judicial, was filed, or had a confirmed Prenot@mi appointment, by the end of March 27, 2025 (23:59 Rome time), it is generally evaluated under the old rules, with no generation cap. The decree took effect the next day, March 28.

So a family that got a complete file in before that deadline may still have a great-grandparent case alive today, while an identical family that started a week later does not. If you're not sure where your case stood at that moment, the timeline can usually be reconstructed from evidence (appointment confirmations, submission receipts, court filings) rather than memory.

"Exclusively Italian": the condition that surprises people

Most write-ups stop at the two-generation cap. The "exclusively Italian" requirement is just as important and far less understood.

It means the parent or grandparent you claim through has to have held citizenship only in Italy at the deciding moment. The classic break: an Italian grandfather who naturalized in the U.S. became, in that instant, no longer exclusively Italian. If that happened before he passed citizenship down the line, the chain can fail, no matter how Italian the rest of your family tree looks.

This is why we ask every family for three specific dates: the ancestor's birth, their U.S. naturalization (if any), and the birth of the next person in the line. Those three dates, in that order, decide most consular cases. We wrote a separate guide on exactly how to read them.

How to tell which group you're in

You don't have to become an expert in Italian citizenship law to answer the only question that matters right now: is there a path for me, and which one?

The honest way to find out is to map your specific family line against the current rules, the two-generation cap, the "exclusively Italian" condition, the 1948 route, and the pre-cutoff exception, all at once. That's the read we do for free.

Send us five facts about your Italian ancestor: their name, the town they were born in, their year of birth, the year they emigrated, and whether they ever became a U.S. citizen. We'll tell you which route fits, consular, judicial, or neither, within two business days. If the answer is no, we'll say so plainly and explain what, if anything, is still available to you.

The law got more complicated in 2025. Finding out where you stand shouldn't be.

Information current as of April 2026. Italian citizenship law continues to evolve, and a few related questions are still before Italy's courts; we update this guidance when the law changes.