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Blog/Published April 17, 2026 · Updated September 19, 2026

How to Get Italian Citizenship by Descent (Jure Sanguinis) in 2026

By Anna Moore

How Italian citizenship by descent works after the 2025 reform: the two-generation cap, sole-citizenship rule, the pre-1948 exception, and transitional filings.

Italian jure sanguinis is no longer the open-ended great-grandparent hunt that many diaspora families spent a decade planning around. Decree-Law No. 36/2025 — widely nicknamed the "Tajani Decree" after Italy's foreign minister — was issued on 28 March 2025 and enacted as Law No. 74/2025 on 23 May 2025, inserting a new Article 3-bis into Law 91/1992 that caps most new descent claims at two generations. On 12 March 2026, Italy's Constitutional Court, in Judgment No. 63/2026, upheld the reform against constitutional challenge, so at this point the new limits should be treated as settled law rather than something likely to be reversed on appeal.

What the reform actually changed

Before this reform, many applicants pursued unbroken ancestral chains stretching back to Italian unification in 1861, since jure sanguinis historically had no generational limit as long as documentation survived and no ancestor had naturalized elsewhere before the next link in the chain was born. Under the new rules, a fresh adult claim is generally limited to descent through an Italian-born parent or an Italian-born grandparent — great-grandparents and more distant ancestors no longer create a new claim on their own. A second, separate hard stop survives from the old law and remains just as important: the Italian ancestor in your chain must have held only Italian citizenship at the legally relevant moment, whether that is their death or the birth of the next person in the line. If that ancestor naturalized in another country — the United States, Canada, Australia, and Brazil are the most common cases in practice — before the next generation was born, the bloodline is considered broken under current interpretation, regardless of how many generations otherwise qualify.

Who still has a workable claim, and who does not

A parent born in Italy generally still works, provided they had not naturalized abroad before your birth. A grandparent born in Italy works on the same sole-citizenship logic. A great-grandparent or more distant ancestor generally does not create a new claim under the reformed law, unless your specific filing falls inside the transitional window described below. It is also worth knowing that the administrative side of adult applications is shifting at the same time as the substantive rules: starting in 2026, under Law No. 11/2026, processing is gradually centralizing at Italy's foreign ministry (MAECI) rather than remaining fully distributed across individual consulates, with full transition targeted for 2029. In practice this means processing locations and backlogs may look different by consulate depending on how far along that transition is at any given moment — worth checking directly with your consulate rather than relying on older forum posts.

The transitional carve-out and minor children

There is a meaningful exception built into the reform for people who acted before it took effect. Applications that were already filed, or consular appointments that were already booked, before 27 March 2025 at 23:59 Rome time are still assessed under the old unlimited-generation rules — so if your family's paperwork or appointment predates that cutoff, the two-generation cap does not apply to your file.

Minor children have their own separate deadlines. For children born on or before 25 May 2025, parents can lodge a preserving declaration by 31 May 2026 to protect the child's citizenship rights under the pre-reform framework. Children born after 25 May 2025 generally need a declaration within three years of birth instead. One practical improvement: from 1 January 2026, the former €250 fee that used to apply to minor declarations was abolished, which removes a small but real barrier for larger families filing multiple children's declarations at once.

If the reform closes your path: the naturalization fallback

If the two-generation cap or the sole-citizenship rule cuts off your jure sanguinis claim, Italy still offers a meaningfully shorter naturalization track for anyone with an Italian parent or grandparent: two years of legal residence in Italy, instead of the ordinary ten years required of most third-country nationals. This is worth being clear-eyed about — it is a genuine residency project, not a paperwork-only claim you can complete from abroad. You will need to actually live in Italy, handle housing, obtain a codice fiscale, and maintain lawful residence status throughout, all requirements covered separately in our guide to Italian citizenship by naturalization. For the wider landscape of EU citizenship options beyond Italy specifically, see EU citizenship and the general move to Italy guide.

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