In 2025 Italy reformed the way citizenship passes down through the generations. The route that once had no generational limit is gone — but citizenship by descent is far from closed. Many families still qualify, and many people who assume the reform ended their claim are mistaken. What changed is not simply whether you can be recognised, but what it now takes to prove it.
What changed in 2025
On 28 March 2025 the Italian government issued a decree — converted into Law 74/2025 on 23 May 2025 — that limits recognition of citizenship by descent, broadly, to those with a parent or grandparent who was exclusively an Italian citizen. In practice this is a two-generation limit for new applications. Two principles soften it. First, anyone already recognised as an Italian citizen keeps that status. Second, applications — and even consular appointments — made before 27 March 2025 continue to be judged under the previous, more generous rules. That distinction still decides a great many cases today.
Who still qualifies
A claim may be very much alive if any of the following describes your family: you descend from a parent or grandparent who held only Italian citizenship; you or a relative had already applied, or booked a consular appointment, before the March 2025 cut-off — including cases that were refused at the consulate and can now be pursued before an Italian court; your line passes through a woman before 1948, or through an ancestor whose foreign naturalisation was involuntary or happened while a child was still a minor, both of which the Italian courts continue to recognise; or you are prepared to establish two years of legal residence in Italy, a route open to any person of Italian descent regardless of generation.
The document that now decides the case
Under the new rules the pivotal question is whether your Italian ancestor was exclusively an Italian citizen at the moment that mattered — that they had not become a citizen of another country before the next person in the line was born, or that any such naturalisation was involuntary. That proof rarely lives in Italy. It lives in American records: naturalisation files held by USCIS and the National Archives, county and state vital records, census returns. Establishing with documents — not assumptions — that an ancestor never naturalised, or naturalised too late to break the chain, is now the single most important step in most cases.
Go deeper → Your ancestor’s American naturalisation — the record that now decides the case. What it is, where it lives, and why proving whether (and when) an ancestor became American is the pivot of a claim today.
How I work
My work is the genealogical and documentary foundation of a citizenship case, on both sides of the Atlantic. In Italy I reconstruct the line through the original civil and parish registers — the birth, marriage and death acts held in the state archives — the same primary-source method you can see throughout this site. Through established correspondents in the United States I obtain the naturalisation, vital and census records that prove an ancestor’s status. The result is a complete, court-ready dossier.
Where a case calls for a judicial route — a pre-1948 maternal line, an involuntary naturalisation, a grandfathered application refused at the consulate — I work alongside established legal specialists in Italy who handle the filing itself. I am a professional genealogist and a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, not a lawyer: the research and documentation are mine, the legal representation is theirs. It is the two halves together that make a case stand up.
Start with a preliminary evaluation
Every case begins with one question: does your family still have a claim, and by which route? I review what you know, identify the line, and tell you honestly whether it is worth pursuing — and how.
Read my verified client reviews on Trustpilot →
This page is general information and reflects the rules as of July 2026; it is not legal advice. Italian citizenship law is still evolving, and every case turns on its own documents.