Italian Citizenship by Descent:Constitutional Court Ruling Ends Millions of Claims

Italy’s Constitutional Court just slammed the door on millions of people who thought they had a birthright to an Italian passport. On March 12, 2026, the court upheld Law 74/2025, confirming that Italian citizenship by descent is now capped at two generations. If your connection to Italy runs through a great-grandparent or further back, you are almost certainly locked out. Not paused. Not delayed. Gone.

This is not speculation or a pending bill sitting in parliamentary limbo. The Constitutional Court ruled the generational limits constitutional, rejecting challenges on four separate grounds. The decision cannot be appealed within Italy’s legal system. For an estimated 80 million people worldwide who claim Italian ancestry, the path that existed for over a century just evaporated in a single ruling.

And if you think this is just an Italy problem, you have not been paying attention. Countries everywhere are tightening citizenship by descent rules, closing loopholes, adding residency requirements, and capping generational eligibility. The lesson from Italy’s ruling could not be louder: if you have a legitimate claim to a second passport through ancestry, you need to act on it now. Not next year. Not when you “get around to it.” Now. Because the rules always change, and they never change in your favour.

What Italy’s Constitutional Court Actually Ruled on Italian Citizenship by Descent

The ruling came down on March 12, 2026, after a public hearing the day before. A court in Turin had filed a constitutional challenge to Law 74/2025, arguing it violated principles of equality, reasonableness, legal certainty, and Italy’s international obligations. The Constitutional Court was not persuaded. It found the challenges “partly unfounded and partly inadmissible,” leaving the generational cap fully intact.

What makes this ruling particularly brutal is the legal fiction it upholds. Law 74/2025 does not say your Italian citizenship by descent has been revoked. It does not say it has been withdrawn. It says you never had it in the first place. If you were born abroad, hold another nationality, and your Italian connection runs deeper than a grandparent, the Italian state now considers you to have never been a citizen at all. Retroactively. As if 160 years of jure sanguinis law simply did not apply to you.

I’ve seen this film before. Governments do not take away rights with a clean break. They rewrite history so they never existed.

The Tajani Decree: How Law 74/2025 Gutted Italian Citizenship by Descent

To understand the full picture, you need to rewind to March 28, 2025. That is when Italy’s Council of Ministers issued Decree-Law 36/2025, known as the Tajani Decree after Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani. By May 23, 2025, it had been converted into Law 74/2025.

Before this law, the rules for Italian citizenship by descent were remarkably generous. You could claim citizenship through any ancestor who was alive when the Kingdom of Italy was founded in 1861, provided the chain of Italian citizenship was never broken. Great-great-grandparents, fifth-generation connections, even further back. All valid. That made Italian jure sanguinis one of the most accessible ancestry-based citizenship programmes on the planet.

The new law gutted all of that. Under Law 74/2025, Italian citizenship by descent is now limited to people who have an Italian parent or grandparent. That is it. Two generations maximum.

But here’s the kicker. It is not enough to just have an Italian grandparent. That grandparent must have held exclusively Italian citizenship at the time of their death, or at the time of the descendant’s birth. If they naturalised as an American, Brazilian, or Argentine citizen before your parent was born, the chain is broken under the new rules.

Italian Citizenship by Descent: Who Got Locked Out

The numbers are staggering. An estimated 80 million people worldwide claim some degree of Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations sit in Brazil (roughly 32 million), Argentina (about 25 million), and the United States (around 20 million). The overwhelming majority of these people trace their Italian roots back three, four, or five generations. Under the new rules, they are out.

The pipeline that was building before the law hit was enormous. Argentina’s consulates alone processed 30,000 Italian citizenship by descent applications in 2024, a 50% increase from the previous year. Brazil processed 20,000 in the same period. Italy’s overseas citizen registry swelled from 4.6 million to 6.4 million between 2014 and 2024. That growth rate spooked the Italian government into action.

The numbers don’t lie. Millions of people who assumed they had all the time in the world just got a wake-up call. And the roughly 60,000 who filed before the March 27, 2025 cutoff? They are being processed under the old rules. They got in just in time. Everyone else is left staring at a closed door.

The Three Narrow Exceptions to Italy’s New Rules

Law 74/2025 is not completely airtight. Three narrow exceptions exist, and if you fall into one of them, you may still have a path. But “narrow” is the operative word here.

Exception 1: You filed before the cutoff. If your Italian citizenship by descent application was submitted by 11:59 PM Rome time on March 27, 2025, you are processed under the old unlimited-generation rules. Roughly 60,000 applications fall into this bucket. If you are one of them, breathe. Your case continues.

Exception 2: Exclusive Italian citizenship. If your parent or grandparent held exclusively Italian citizenship at the time of their death (meaning they never naturalised anywhere else), you may still qualify. This is designed to protect people whose ancestors maintained a genuine, unbroken link to Italy.

Exception 3: Residency in Italy. If a parent or adoptive parent lived in Italy for at least two consecutive years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the applicant’s birth, the chain may still hold. This rewards what Italy considers a “genuine connection” to the country.

Outside these three scenarios, claims beyond the grandparent generation are dead. And even within these exceptions, the documentation burden is steep. You need to prove exclusive citizenship or residency with official records, and Italian bureaucracy is not exactly known for making things easy.

Why This Ruling Proves You Must Act Early on Citizenship by Descent

This is the section that matters most. Not because the legal details of Italy’s ruling are unimportant, but because the pattern it reveals is something I have watched play out over and over again across dozens of countries and decades of working in this space.

Citizenship opportunities do not expand. They contract. Every single time.

Think about what happened in Italy. For over 160 years, jure sanguinis was effectively unlimited. Your great-great-grandfather emigrated from Naples in 1890? Congratulations, you could claim an Italian passport in 2024. People treated this as a permanent fixture of Italian law, an immovable right they could exercise whenever it became convenient. Millions put it on the “someday” list.

Then in the span of 12 months, it vanished. The decree came in March 2025. The law was formalised by May 2025. The Constitutional Court stamped its approval in March 2026. From unlimited generations to two. From “anytime” to “never.” That is how fast governments move when they decide a programme is too popular.

And Italy is not an isolated case. Not even close.

Countries Tightening Citizenship by Descent Rules: The Global Pattern

Italy’s crackdown fits into a much wider trend. Governments around the world are restricting ancestry-based citizenship programmes, adding language tests, imposing residency requirements, and capping generational eligibility. The direction of travel is always the same: tighter, harder, more expensive.

Portugal’s Sephardic citizenship programme is a textbook example. It existed for years, processing thousands of applications. Then the government suspended it amid corruption allegations in 2022. The people who applied early got their Portuguese passports. The people who waited? That ship has sailed.

Spain ran a similar programme with a hard deadline of October 2019. Plenty of people who qualified simply did not get their paperwork together in time. They assumed the deadline would be extended. It was not.

The pattern is consistent across every jurisdiction. Programmes open with generous terms to attract applicants. They become popular. Governments get nervous about the numbers, the costs, or the political optics. They restrict. They cap. They close. And the people who moved early are the ones holding passports while everyone else holds regret.

Countries Still Offering Italian Citizenship by Descent Alternatives

If Italy has shut you out, or if you never had Italian ancestry to begin with, the good news is that several countries still offer citizenship by descent routes. Some are surprisingly accessible. But (and this should be obvious by now) there is zero guarantee any of them will stay that way.

Ireland grants citizenship through grandparents via the Foreign Births Register. If you have an Irish-born grandparent, you can register and obtain an Irish passport giving you full EU citizenship. The process takes 12 to 18 months and costs around EUR 280. But Ireland has already tightened documentation requirements, and processing times have ballooned. Moving early is the smart play.

Poland offers citizenship confirmation if you can prove an unbroken chain of Polish citizenship through your ancestors. There is no generational limit yet, but documentation requirements are stringent and processing times keep stretching. Polish archives from the war years are incomplete, making older claims harder with each passing year.

Hungary has a simplified naturalisation process for people of Hungarian descent who can demonstrate a basic knowledge of Hungarian. The language test is the main barrier, but the programme remains one of the most accessible in Europe. How long that lasts is anyone’s guess.

Lithuania allows citizenship restoration for descendants of Lithuanian citizens who left between 1918 and 1990. The programme is well-established but niche, and Lithuania has been tightening eligibility criteria incrementally.

For those open to non-European options, countries across Latin America offer various pathways. Tax Free Companies can help structure your affairs in jurisdictions that combine favourable tax treatment with residency-to-citizenship pathways.

What Happens Next: Pending Legal Challenges to Italian Citizenship by Descent Restrictions

The Constitutional Court’s March 2026 ruling was decisive, but it may not be the final word. Several legal avenues remain open, though none are guaranteed.

The Mantova challenge. A separate constitutional challenge to Law 74/2025, filed by the Tribunal of Mantova on different grounds from the Turin case, is scheduled for hearing on June 9, 2026. Different court, different arguments. Could it produce a different outcome? Possibly. But betting your citizenship claim on it would be a gamble.

The Court of Cassation hearing. Italy’s highest civil court will hear the “minor-age issue” on April 14, 2026. This concerns whether an ancestor’s decision to naturalise in another country while their child was still a minor permanently severed the bloodline for all future generations. A favourable ruling could reopen some cases, but only for a specific subset of applicants.

EU courts. Citizenship lawyers have begun advising judges to refer pending cases to the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg. If Italian law conflicts with EU principles of proportionality or acquired rights, Luxembourg could override Rome. But EU court proceedings take years, and the outcome is far from certain.

Let’s be blunt: none of these remaining legal challenges should be treated as a reason to wait. If you have any other second passport option available to you, pursue it now while the door is still open. Hoping for a legal reversal on Italian citizenship by descent is not a strategy. It is wishful thinking.

What You Can Still Do Right Now If You Have Italian Ancestry

If Italian citizenship by descent is no longer available to you under the new rules, you are not completely out of options. They are narrower, slower, and more expensive than the old jure sanguinis route, but they exist.

Residency-based naturalisation. Living in Italy for 10 years (or 4 years for EU citizens) can lead to naturalisation. If you have Italian ancestry, the residency requirement drops to just 2 years under a provision in the same reform. You will need a B1-level Italian language certificate and a clean criminal record. It is not fast, but it is a real pathway.

Citizenship by marriage. Marrying an Italian citizen allows you to apply for citizenship after 2 years of marriage (if resident in Italy) or 3 years (if residing abroad). These timelines are halved if you have children together. You will need to pass a B1 Italian language test.

Reacquisition. If your ancestor lost Italian citizenship before August 15, 1992 by naturalising in another country, you may be able to reacquire Italian citizenship. This window is open from July 1, 2025 to December 31, 2027. It requires filing a declaration at your local Italian consulate.

Filed before the cutoff? If you got your application in before March 27, 2025, your case proceeds under the old rules. Roughly 60,000 applications are in this position. Do not let your case stall. Stay on top of your documentation, respond to consulate requests promptly, and consider professional guidance to keep things moving.

Common Mistakes People Make With Italian Citizenship by Descent Applications

After years of working with clients on citizenship applications across dozens of countries, the same errors come up again and again. Here are the ones that cost people the most.

Waiting for the “perfect time.” This is the mistake that the Italian ruling just punished millions of people for making. There is no perfect time. There is only “before the rules change” and “after.” The people who filed their Italian citizenship by descent applications in 2023 or early 2024 are fine. The people who planned to file “next year” are scrambling.

Assuming the rules will stay the same. Absolute lunacy. No government in history has made a citizenship programme more generous over time. Every change restricts. Every reform tightens. Treating current rules as permanent is the most expensive assumption you can make.

Not gathering documents early. Birth certificates, marriage records, naturalisation papers, death certificates. These take months to obtain from foreign archives. Italian comune offices are understaffed and slow. If you need apostilles, translations, and legalisation, add more months. Starting the document chain early is not optional, it is the difference between making a deadline and missing it.

Using the consular route when courts are faster. Before the reform, applying through an Italian court (the “1948 cases” for maternal line claims) could be significantly faster than consulate queues that stretched 5 to 10 years. People who chose the slow consular route out of convenience often watched court applicants get their citizenship years ahead of them.

Ignoring alternative citizenship routes. Many people with Italian ancestry also have Irish, Polish, Hungarian, or Lithuanian roots. While fixated on Italy, they ignored faster or easier routes to an EU passport and the asset protection benefits that come with it. Diversifying your citizenship strategy across multiple countries is not paranoia. After Italy’s ruling, it is common sense.

Italian Citizenship by Descent vs. Other EU Ancestry Passports: Comparison

The comparison makes one thing screaming at me to act obvious. Italy was the most generous programme in this group for over a century. Now it is the most restrictive. Poland and Hungary still have no formal generational limits. Ireland caps at grandparents but the process is straightforward. Any of these could follow Italy’s path. If you have qualifying ancestry in more than one country, pursue the one most likely to tighten first. And consider working with Tax Free Companies to structure your affairs optimally once you secure that second nationality.

The Bigger Picture: Why Governments Keep Restricting Italian Citizenship by Descent and Similar Programmes

Understanding why Italy acted helps predict where the next crackdown will come from. Three forces drove this reform, and they apply to every country with a generous ancestry programme.

Consular overload. Italy’s consulates were drowning. Multi-year backlogs in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, and New York made the system unsustainable. When processing demand overwhelms capacity, governments do not hire more staff. They reduce demand by raising the bar.

Political perception. The idea that someone with no connection to modern Italy, who does not speak the language, pay taxes, or participate in civic life, could claim a passport and vote in Italian elections was politically toxic. The 6.4 million overseas Italians had grown large enough to swing elections, which made the domestic electorate nervous.

EU free movement concerns. An Italian passport is not just an Italian passport. It is an EU passport. It grants the right to live and work in 27 countries. When Italy grants citizenship, it is effectively granting EU citizenship, and other member states were increasingly uncomfortable with Italy’s open-door ancestry policy.

These same pressures exist in Ireland, Poland, and Hungary to varying degrees. Any country that sees a sharp spike in overseas citizenship applications will eventually react the same way Italy did. The only question is when.

Citizenship by Investment: The Backup Plan When Ancestry Routes Close

Ancestry is the cheapest route to a second passport. But it requires qualifying ancestors and increasingly, perfect timing. When ancestry doors close, citizenship by investment (CBI) programmes become the backup plan.

I will be blunt about the Caribbean CBI programmes. St Kitts, Dominica, Grenada, and the rest still sell passports starting around USD 100,000. But these are tiny island nations with limited diplomatic clout. Their visa-free access lists are shrinking regularly as major nations withdraw access, with the UK stripping St Lucia of visa-free entry in March 2026 being just the latest example. The reputational baggage attached to Caribbean economic citizenship is real. If your goal is a passport that opens doors rather than raises eyebrows, look elsewhere.

Turkey’s citizenship by investment programme is the standout option for serious applicants. A USD 400,000 real estate purchase (held for three years) gets you a Turkish passport with visa-free access to 110+ countries, an E-1/E-2 investor treaty with the United States, and a foothold in one of the world’s most strategically positioned economies. Unlike Caribbean passports, a Turkish passport carries genuine weight at border control. Processing takes 3 to 6 months, and the real estate itself can generate rental income while you hold it. I wrote a full breakdown of why Turkish CBI beats the Caribbean options if you want the detailed comparison.

Then there is Argentina, which is shaping up to be one of the most interesting citizenship plays of 2026. Under President Milei’s reforms, Argentina will offer a fast-track citizenship route for investors putting in around USD 500,000. The standard residency-to-citizenship path takes just two years, and Argentina permits dual citizenship. The country’s tax situation needs careful navigation, but as a passport it punches well above its weight. Milei’s administration has also tightened immigration rules under Decree 366, which means this window of opportunity is already narrowing. Sound familiar?

The key point is this: a diversified citizenship strategy does not rely on a single route. If your Italian citizenship by descent claim just died, having a CBI option already in progress would mean the difference between panic and pivoting.

Final Thoughts: The Window Is Always Closing

Italy’s Constitutional Court ruling is not just a story about Italian citizenship by descent. It is a story about how governments everywhere are pulling up the drawbridge on ancestry-based passports. The era of unlimited generational claims is ending, one country at a time.

The people who moved early on their Italian claims are holding EU passports right now. The people who waited are reading articles like this one, trying to figure out what went wrong. The difference between those two groups is not luck or privilege. It is urgency.

If you have a legitimate ancestry claim to citizenship in any country, whether that is Ireland, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, or somewhere else entirely, the only rational response to Italy’s ruling is to start your application immediately. Not to research it for another six months. Not to “think about it.” To start. Because I’ve seen this film before, and it always ends the same way.

The Second Passport Blueprint covers every viable ancestry, investment, and residency route to a second passport. It is updated monthly, so when the next country tightens its rules, you will know before the news cycle catches up. For tailored advice on your specific situation, including which asset protection strategies complement a second citizenship, Tax Free Companies can help structure everything under one roof.