Can I Still Get Italian Citizenship Through My Great-Grandparent? An Honest Answer After the 2025 Reform

For decades, a great-grandparent born in Italy was a perfectly good starting point for an Italian citizenship claim. A lot of older articles, forums, and even some service pages still talk as if that's true. If your Italian roots run to a great-grandparent, you've probably read those pages and felt a flash of hope.

We'd rather give you the honest current answer than the comfortable 2023 one.

The short version

For most people whose nearest Italian-born ancestor is a great-grandparent, and who did not have an application on file before the 2025 cutoff, the standard descent route is no longer available. Italy's 2025 reform (Law 74/2025) capped citizenship by descent at two generations, generally a parent or grandparent. A great-grandparent is the third generation back, which falls outside the cap.

That's the rule that changed, and it's why the encouraging older content you found is out of date.

Why a great-grandparent used to work

Before March 2025, Italian citizenship by descent followed an unbroken bloodline with no generation limit. What mattered wasn't how many generations back the Italian ancestor was. It was whether the chain of transmission stayed intact, meaning nobody naturalized at the wrong time and broke it. So a great-grandparent, or even further back, could anchor a valid claim.

The 2025 reform replaced "unbroken chain, any length" with "unbroken chain, but the Italian-born ancestor must be within two generations." That single change is what moved great-grandparent lines from "often yes" to "usually no."

The exceptions that still matter

"Usually no" is not "always no." A great-grandparent line can still be alive if:

1. Something was filed before the cutoff. If an application, court case, or confirmed appointment existed by the end of March 27, 2025, your case is generally judged under the old rules, with no generation cap. People genuinely forget that a parent or relative started a file years ago, so this is always worth checking.

2. There's a qualifying ancestor closer than you think. Sometimes what looks like a great-grandparent case is actually a grandparent case once the line is mapped carefully, for example if a grandparent (not just the great-grandparent) was also Italian-born or held Italian citizenship. The generations are counted from the right person, and that's easy to get wrong on your own.

3. A within-cap maternal line. If the relevant Italian ancestor is a woman with a child born before January 1, 1948, and she's within the two-generation window, the separate 1948 court route may apply. That's about a grandmother-level line, though, not a great-grandparent.

What about going to court?

You'll see suggestions to "just file a lawsuit." Be careful. The two-generation cap is the law, and a court case that simply asks a judge to disregard it for a great-grandparent line, with nothing else going for it, is not a strategy. There are legitimate judicial routes, like a real 1948 maternal-line case within the cap, but "sue and hope the cap doesn't apply" isn't one of them. The reform is also under constitutional review, so things could still change, but we won't tell you to bank on an outcome that hasn't happened.

How to know for sure

The frustrating thing about great-grandparent cases is that the answer depends on details that are easy to miscount: exactly which ancestor was Italian-born, whether anyone filed before the cutoff, and whether a closer qualifying ancestor exists in the line. Getting it wrong in either direction is costly. Some people give up on a case that's actually viable through a grandparent, and others spend money chasing one that the cap has closed.

Send us what you know about your Italian ancestor and the generations between you. We'll count the line correctly, check for the exceptions above, and give you a straight answer, for free, within two business days.

Information current as of January 2026. The 2025 reform is under constitutional review and the law may evolve; we update this guidance when it does.