Consulate route or court route, and what each one costs in 2026

Both routes now charge €600 per person to the state: the consular application fee, and the court filing fee, which since 1 January 2025 is €600 for every petitioner rather than one fee for a whole family. The difference between them is not price but purpose: the consulate decides files that clearly satisfy the rules, and the court is where you go when an authority has said no or when the law itself is in dispute.

If you are reading a page that says the court route costs €286, it was written before 2025 and has not been updated.

State fees, both routes

Consular application, per adult600 euros

Same fee in dollars, fixed to 30 Sep 2026699.10 dollars

Court filing fee, per petitioner600 euros

Minor declarations, since 1 Jan 2026no fee

Re-examination after a minor-issue denialno new fee

The consular fee is charged for examining the file and is not refunded whatever the outcome. The court fee is paid at filing. Neither buys a result.

Who each route is for

The consulate, or an Italian comune if you live in Italy

Your line passes a gate in article 3-bis and the chain is documentable.
You hold a pre-cutoff filing or a confirmed pre-cutoff appointment.
You want a re-examination of a denial that rested on the minor issue.

The court in Italy

A maternal line before 1948, which consulates do not recognise and courts do.
A refusal you believe is wrong, after the administrative avenues are exhausted.
Being blocked from filing at all, on the standing recognised in Cassation 13818/2026 of 12 May 2026.
A deliberate bet on the pending EU case, with a request to stay proceedings.

Neither, for now

A line that passes no gate in article 3-bis and has no pre-cutoff filing. Paying either fee does not create eligibility, and the consular fee is not returned when the answer is no.

What the court route asks of you that the consulate does not

Venue. Cases go to the immigration section of the tribunal for the ancestor's comune of origin, not to a court of your choosing.
Burden. Under the amended procedure, the claimant must plead and prove the absence of events that would have interrupted transmission. You prove the negative rather than making the state disprove it.
Evidence limits. The decisory oath and witness testimony are excluded in these proceedings. The case is won on documents.
Counsel. In practice an Italian lawyer is required, and that is the cost nobody can quote you reliably.

The number we will not invent

Lawyer fees

Published asking prices we found on 7 September 2026 range from a few thousand euros for a whole family to about seven thousand euros plus tax per person. That is a spread of asking prices, not a market average, and we have no way to verify what is actually paid. Get a written quote that names the fee, what is excluded, and what happens if the case is stayed.

Practitioners also describe smaller court costs beyond the filing fee, such as a revenue stamp and a registration charge on the judgment. We have not verified those against a primary source, so treat them as items to ask about rather than as figures to budget from this page.

Speed

The honest comparison is not a number. Law 11 of 19 January 2026 sets a 36-month decision deadline for the new centralised citizenship office, and until centralisation each consulate may accept in a year only as many new applications as it completed the year before, with a floor of one hundred. Court timelines vary by tribunal and are not centrally published. Anyone quoting you a confident month count for either route is estimating. See the timing page.

Sources, checked on 7 September 2026

Consular fee of €600 per adult application, non-refundable, and the rate of $699.10 fixed through 30 September 2026: notices of the Italian consulates in New York, Boston and Chicago.
Court filing fee of €600 per petitioner: article 13, paragraph 1-sexies, of Presidential Decree 115/2002, added by Law 207 of 2024, article 1, paragraph 814, in force 1 January 2025; Ministry of Justice circular of 16 January 2025.
Procedure and burden of proof: article 19-bis of Legislative Decree 150/2011 as amended by Law 74/2025; territorial venue under Law 206/2021.
Court of Cassation, first civil section, judgment 13818/2026, deposited 12 May 2026.
Law 11 of 19 January 2026, published in the Official Gazette on 4 February 2026, in force 19 February 2026: 36-month deadline, transitional intake caps, centralisation from 1 January 2029.
Abolition of the fee for minors' declarations from 1 January 2026, and no new fee for re-examination under Interior Ministry circular prot. 65050 of 10 August 2026.

One next step

Route choice is the second decision. The first is whether any gate in article 3-bis opens for your line, because that answer decides whether either route is worth €600. Run the free check before you pay anyone, including us.

Run the free check, about two minutes

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