Do I still qualify for Italian citizenship after the 2025 law?

Some lines still qualify and most do not, and which group you are in turns on four written conditions rather than on how Italian your family feels. Law 74 of 2025 did not abolish citizenship by descent; it inserted article 3-bis into Law 91/1992, which treats a person born abroad who holds another citizenship as never having acquired Italian citizenship unless at least one of four conditions is met.

Those four conditions are below, in the order the statute lists them. Read them as tests your family either passes or does not, and answer each one about your own facts.

The four gates in article 3-bis

(a) A complete application already filed

An application for recognition, complete with its documentation, filed with the competent consulate or with an Italian comune by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. A file that meets this is judged under the pre-2025 rules, with no generational limit.

Your question: was a complete bundle actually handed in before that moment, or only started?

(a-bis) An appointment confirmed before the cutoff

An application filed on the day of an appointment that the competent office had communicated to the applicant by 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. The booking holds the old law open, provided the file is complete on the day.

Your question: do you hold a confirmation from the office dated on or before that moment?

(b) A court case already filed

A judicial claim filed by the same moment, 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. Officials are directed to take the resulting judgment as it stands.

Your question: is there a filing date on a case in an Italian court, on or before that day?

(c) A parent or grandparent who held only Italian citizenship

An ascendant of the first or second degree, meaning a parent or a grandparent including an adoptive parent, who holds, or held at the moment of death, exclusively Italian citizenship and no other. The Interior Ministry circular of 28 May 2025 reads that exclusivity at the date of the event that triggers acquisition, which is your own birth, or at the ascendant's death if they died first.

Your question: on the day you were born, did that parent or grandparent hold any citizenship other than Italian?

(d) A parent who lived in Italy for two continuous years

A parent or adopter who resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before your birth or adoption. This is a separate gate, not a softer version of (c).

Your question: is there a period of Italian residence in your parent's life that a comune could certify, sitting after their citizenship and before your birth?

What does not decide it

Birthplace is not the legal test. Most articles say the rule is that your parent or grandparent must have been born in Italy. The statute says exclusively Italian citizenship. The two overlap heavily in American families, because a US-born ancestor was normally a dual citizen from birth and therefore fails exclusivity, but the written test is the citizenship, not the birth certificate.
Distance alone is not the test either. "Two generations" is shorthand. A grandparent who naturalized in the United States before you were born fails (c) just as surely as a great-grandparent does.
Feeling Italian, holding records, or having a common surname decides nothing. No official weighs any of that.

Routes that sit outside article 3-bis

If none of the four gates fits, three other doors exist and are worth naming, because they are governed by different rules and different deadlines.

A minor child of a parent who is Italian by birthfree declaration

A living ancestor who lost citizenship by naturalizing before 1992closes 31 Dec 2027

Two years of legal residence in Italy, for descendantsdiscretionary

These are set out on the minors page and the page for lines that were cut.

What is still open

Not settled as of 7 September 2026

On 23 July 2026 the Constitutional Court asked the EU Court of Justice whether article 3-bis may reach back to people born before it existed. Until Luxembourg answers, article 3-bis applies in full. A realistic horizon for that answer is late 2027 or 2028.

We do not know how it will come out, and neither does anyone quoting a percentage at you.

Sources, checked on 7 September 2026

Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992, inserted by Decree-Law 36 of 28 March 2025, converted with amendments by Law 74 of 23 May 2025, in force 24 May 2025.
Interior Ministry circular of 28 May 2025, first operating instructions on article 3-bis, including the timing of the exclusivity test.
Constitutional Court, judgment 63/2026, heard 11 March 2026, deposited 30 April 2026: the challenges to article 3-bis were declared partly unfounded and partly inadmissible.
Constitutional Court, order 147/2026, deposited 23 July 2026: referral to the EU Court of Justice under article 267 TFEU.

One next step

Five of the questions above are about dates in your family's records, not about law. Our free check walks the four gates in order and tells you which one, if any, your answers reach. It runs in your browser, asks for no email, and can end by telling you that no gate fits.

Run the free check, about two minutes

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