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.
How many generations back does Italian citizenship by descent go?
Two, counted upward from you: a parent or a grandparent. That has been the position since 24 May 2025, when article 3-bis of Law 91/1992 came into force; before it there was no generational limit at all, which is why pages written earlier give a different answer and are not wrong about their own date.
The count is also not the whole rule. Reaching a grandparent is necessary and not sufficient, because the statute then asks a second question about what citizenship that grandparent held.
What the statute counts
Article 3-bis treats a person born abroad who holds another citizenship as never having acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of five conditions is met. The condition that ordinary descent lines run on, lettered (c), refers to a first-degree or second-degree ascendant.
The statute counts degrees of ascent, not generations of a family tree, and the two phrases part company as soon as anyone says "three generations back" without saying from whom. Count from the person who would apply. Their parent is one step; their grandparent is two; their great-grandparent is three and is out.
An adoptive parent counts at first degree. A step-parent who never adopted is not an ascendant at all.
The second question the same condition asks
Condition (c) is not satisfied by the existence of a grandparent. It requires that the grandparent holds, or held at the moment of death, exclusively Italian citizenship, and the Interior Ministry circular of 28 May 2025 measures that at the applicant's birth, or at the ascendant's death where the ascendant died first.
For an American family this is where most lines stop, and for a reason of American law rather than Italian law: a grandparent born in the United States held United States citizenship from the day of their birth, so they never held Italian citizenship exclusively at any later date. That is why the exclusivity page matters more to most readers than the generation count does.
Three ways the count is not the limit
- Lines were cut long before any generation cap. Under Law 555 of 13 June 1912 a person who naturalised abroad could not transmit to a child born afterwards, a woman could not transmit before 1 January 1948, and a minor child's position depended on articles 7 and 12. Those breaks close a line at the second degree just as easily as at the fifth.
- Condition (d) does not count degrees at all. It opens where a parent or adopter resided in Italy for at least two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the applicant's birth or adoption. It is a different axis entirely, covered on its own page.
- Files already in the system are judged under the old law. Conditions (a), (a-bis) and (b) preserve the pre-2025 rules for an application, an appointment confirmed by the office, or a court case in place before 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. In those files there is still no generational limit. See what counts as already filed.
Could the count move again?
Domestically, the limit has already survived review: the Constitutional Court, in judgment 63/2026 deposited 30 April 2026, left the new regime standing. One question remains live. By order 147/2026, deliberated 9 June 2026 and deposited 23 July 2026, the Constitutional Court referred to the EU Court of Justice whether EU law permits a national rule that retroactively deems foreign-born dual citizens never to have acquired Italian citizenship.
We do not publish a date for that answer, because none has been set. The page on the referral explains what it could and could not reopen.
We also do not publish a figure for how many people the two-degree limit removed. No authority has published one, and the numbers circulating commercially cite nothing. A page that invents that number is not more useful than a page that says it does not have it.
What to answer about your own family
Families narrate one immigrant. The statute asks about six people: two parents and four grandparents. Only one of them has to satisfy the condition, and the one nobody talks about is often the stronger candidate.
- 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. Cutoff at 23:59 Rome time on 27 March 2025. Read the converted text in the Official Gazette, checked 10 September 2026.
- Interior Ministry circular of 28 May 2025 (protocol 26185), on the timing of the exclusivity test.
- Law 555 of 13 June 1912, articles 7 and 12, for the older transmission and loss rules.
- Constitutional Court, judgment 63/2026, deposited 30 April 2026. Read judgment 63 of 2026 at the Constitutional Court, checked 10 September 2026.
- Constitutional Court, order 147/2026, deliberated 9 June 2026, deposited 23 July 2026, referring a question to the EU Court of Justice.
One next step
The count takes ten seconds and the second question takes a document. The free check does both, for every Italy-born parent and grandparent in turn, and tells you which of the five conditions your answers reach.
Run the free check, about two minutesNo email, no account, and it can end with a plain no.