Jure sanguinis explained

The legal foundation

Italy first codified jure sanguinis transmission in Law 555 of 13 June 1912. That law restricted transmission to the paternal line only (Art. 1). Women could not pass citizenship to their children except in narrow cases — unknown father, stateless father, or children born out of wedlock.

Law 91/1992 replaced Law 555 and introduced full gender equality: citizenship passes through “father or mother” without distinction. It also allowed dual citizenship for the first time. Before 1992, naturalising in another country meant automatic loss of Italian citizenship.

Who qualifies

You may qualify if you have an unbroken chain of Italian citizenship from an Italian-born ancestor down to you. The chain breaks if any person in the line naturalised as a citizen of another country before the birth of the next person. The timing is everything.

Since 24 May 2025, Law 74/2025 restricts new applications to two generations (see below). But for applications filed before 28 March 2025, the old rules apply — no generational limit.

The 1948 rule

The Italian Constitution entered force on 1 January 1948, establishing gender equality under Art. 3. The Constitutional Court later struck down the male-only transmission rule in Sentenza 30/1983, but only from 1 January 1948 forward. For births before that date where citizenship passed through a woman, the consular route is unavailable.

These cases must go through the Italian courts. The Court of Cassation (Sezioni Unite, 4466/2009) confirmed that the equality principle applies retroactively to pre-1948 births, but only a court — not a consulate or comune — can make the recognition. An Italian attorney registered with the bar (iscritto all'albo) must file the petition, typically at the Tribunale Civile di Roma or the tribunal with jurisdiction over the ancestor's comune. Since June 2022, cases can be filed at local tribunals rather than exclusively in Rome.

Court cases take 12–24 months on average. The court filing fee (contributo unificato) is €600 per petitioner. Attorney fees range from €4,000 to €10,000. Success rate for properly documented cases is around 95%.

Law 74/2025 — the generation limit

Decree-Law 36 of 28 March 2025, converted into Law 74/2025 on 23 May 2025 (the “Decreto Tajani”), introduced Art. 3-bis to Law 91/1992.

The “exclusively Italian” requirement in condition (c) is strict. If an Italian parent also held British citizenship, the condition is not met. The Ministry of Interior's Circolare 26185 (28 May 2025) specifies that self-declarations are insufficient — official certificates of non-naturalisation are required as evidence.

On 12 March 2026, the Constitutional Court upheld Law 74/2025, ruling the generation limit constitutionally legitimate. The full written reasoning has not yet been published as of April 2026, but the press release confirms the decision.

Three routes to recognition

The process in summary

1. Identify the Italian ancestor and their birthplace comune. Request the estratto per riassunto dell'atto di nascita from the comune's ufficio di stato civile.
2. Collect vital records for every person in the chain — birth, marriage, and death certificates. UK certificates from GRO (England/Wales), NRS (Scotland), or GRONI (Northern Ireland).
3. Obtain proof of non-naturalisation for any ancestor who lived in the UK. This requires a Letter of No Evidence from the National Archives (pre-October 1986 records) and a Form NQ from UKVI (post-October 1986 records).
4. Apostille each document through the FCDO Legalisation Office. Then translate into Italian. Then apostille the translation separately. Two apostilles per foreign document.
5. Book and attend a Prenotami appointment at your consulate. Submit the full dossier. If anything is missing, the application cannot be accepted — there is no partial submission.

Pending legal questions

Two unresolved issues could affect applications filed in 2026. The Sezioni Unite hearing on 14 April 2026 will decide whether minor children automatically lost Italian citizenship when their father naturalised abroad (Art. 12 vs Art. 7 of Law 555/1912). Recent rulings (Cassazione 17161/2023 and 454/2024) reversed decades of practice on this point.

Separately, whether Law 74/2025's generation limit applies to 1948 court cases remains untested. These cases rest on constitutional equality rights (Art. 3 of the Constitution), and some lawyers argue that an ordinary law cannot retroactively limit a constitutional right. No court has ruled on this interaction post-reform.