Does this apply to your family? Answer a few questions and see where your line stands.
Who in your family was born in Italy, and what happened after: that is all the check asks. No email, no account. It runs in your browser and your answers never leave it. It can end with a plain no.
The written answer below explains the rule this page is about. The check above covers your whole line.
What does jure sanguinis mean?
It is Latin for "by right of blood", and it names the principle that citizenship passes from parent to child rather than from the place where the child happens to be born. In Italian practice the phrase describes a procedure for having an existing citizenship recognised, not a procedure for acquiring a new one. What it does not describe is any particular family's outcome, because since 24 May 2025 the statute stops at a grandparent and adds a test about what other citizenships that person held.
The Latin, and the two spellings you will see
Ius means right or law. Sanguinis is the genitive of sanguis, blood. Put in the ablative it becomes iure sanguinis, by right of blood. English-language sources usually write it with a j, as jure sanguinis, because classical Latin i is conventionally written j in that position. Italian sources normally write it with an i. The two spellings are the same phrase and neither is more correct in this context.
Its opposite number
Ius soli, right of the soil: citizenship from the place of birth. The United States applies it, which is the single fact that decides most American lines under the current Italian test, because a person born in the United States held United States citizenship from the day of their birth.
Recognition, not acquisition, and why the difference is practical
The logic of descent is that the citizenship passed at the moment of birth, by operation of law, and the office is later asked to record a fact that already exists. Article 3-bis is written in exactly that register: it says a person born abroad who holds another citizenship is deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship unless one of five conditions is met. A statute has to reach for that fiction precisely because acquisition would otherwise have happened at birth without anybody's decision.
Two consequences follow, and they pull in opposite directions.
- There is no age limit, no residence requirement and no language requirement in a descent claim. It is not naturalisation and it does not ask you to move anywhere.
- The recognition is not optional. Until an office or a court has recorded it on the records you produce, there is no settled status to rely on, and the office decides on documents rather than on the principle.
What the phrase does not promise
- It does not name a document. It names a basis of claim. What a successful claim produces is a registration in Italian civil records, from which other documents follow later.
- It does not mean unlimited descent. Before 24 May 2025 there was no generational limit. Since then, condition (c) of article 3-bis reaches a first-degree or second-degree ascendant, a parent or a grandparent, and no further. See how many generations back the rule goes.
- It does not mean an intact line. Under Law 555 of 13 June 1912 a line broke where someone naturalised before the next birth, where a woman transmitted to a child born before 1 January 1948, and, in the dispute settled in 2026, where a child was a minor when a parent naturalised.
- It does not promise a timeline. We do not publish one, because no authority publishes per-office waiting figures and the numbers in circulation cite nothing. What is published is machinery, and the timing page sets it out.
- It is not free. A consular application carries a fee of €600 per adult, charged for the examination and not refunded whatever the result. See the fee page.
How the phrase is used in practice
You will meet it in three places, meaning slightly different things each time.
Only the first two are the phrase doing work. The third is where readers are told that a great-grandparent from Sicily makes them Italian, which stopped being accurate on 24 May 2025 for anyone who had not already filed.
What to answer about your own family
If the second question has no dated document behind it, the honest answer is that you do not know yet, and that is a findable answer rather than a dead end.
- Article 3-bis of Law 91 of 5 February 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, for the "deemed never to have acquired" wording and for the first-degree and second-degree limit. Read the converted text in the Official Gazette, checked 10 September 2026.
- Interior Ministry circular of 28 May 2025 (protocol 26185), on when the exclusivity test is measured.
- Law 555 of 13 June 1912, articles 7 and 12, for the historical transmission and loss rules.
- Consular fee of €600 per adult application, non-refundable: notices of the Italian consulates in New York and Boston.
- The Latin is given from the ordinary grammar of the phrase and is not a legal source. Italian statutory texts use the Italian formulation rather than the Latin tag.
One next step
Knowing the phrase does not tell you which of the five conditions your line reaches, and that is the only part that changes what you do next. The free check asks about people and dates rather than about Latin.
Run the free check, about two minutesNo email, no account, and it can end with a plain no.