For many families in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and the United Kingdom, Italian citizenship by descent has long sat in the back of the mind as a quiet family asset. A passport that could be activated when a grandchild wanted to study in Europe, when a retirement plan started taking shape, or when politics at home made a Plan B feel less theoretical.

That assumption is now, for most of these families, no longer correct.

On 23 May 2025, Italy enacted Law 74/2025, which converted the earlier Tajani Decree into permanent legislation. The law rewrote the rules of iure sanguinis, the descent-based citizenship pathway that had allowed millions of Italian descendants to claim Italian and EU citizenship through ancestors who emigrated, often more than a century ago. On 12 March 2026, the Italian Constitutional Court announced that it had rejected the main challenges to the law, with the full judgment (Sentenza 63/2026) deposited on 30 April 2026. The framework is now in force.

This guide explains what changed, who is still eligible under the new rules, and what realistic paths remain for those who are not.

At a glance

• Italian citizenship by descent is now limited to two generations. For applications filed after 27 March 2025, eligibility requires a parent or grandparent born in Italy. Great-grandparents and earlier ancestors no longer create a claim.
• The qualifying ancestor must have held only Italian citizenship at the relevant time. An Italian-born grandfather who naturalised abroad no longer qualifies the descent claim.
• The Constitutional Court upheld the law on 12 March 2026, with the full judgment (Sentenza 63/2026) deposited on 30 April. Further challenges are pending but the framework is in force.
• A two-year naturalisation route is now open to descendants of an Italian-born parent or grandparent, even where the descent pathway is closed. It requires real residence in Italy.
• The Italian Investor Visa is the most flexible route into that two-year residency clock for descendants with the capital to qualify. Minimum €250,000 (innovative startup) or €500,000 (established Italian company).

What Law 74/2025 changed about Italian citizenship by descent

Before March 2025, Italian citizenship by descent had no generational limit. A claimant in São Paulo, Buenos Aires, or New Jersey could trace an unbroken line of citizenship back to an Italian ancestor alive in or after 1861 (the year of Italian unification), and be recognised as Italian at birth. The pathway did not require a visit to Italy. It did not require language. It did not require residence. It required documentation.

The new law makes two changes.

The first is a generational limit. For most applications filed after 27 March 2025, only those with a parent or grandparent born in Italy still qualify. Great-grandparents and earlier ancestors no longer create eligibility on their own. The Italian Ministry of the Interior estimates this affects an applicant pool running into the tens of millions worldwide.

The second is a rule about the qualifying ancestor. Even within that two-generation window, the parent or grandparent must have held only Italian citizenship at the relevant time, meaning the applicant’s birth, or the ancestor’s death if it came first. A grandfather who naturalised as American in 1955 and lived as a dual citizen no longer satisfies the descent test, even if he was born in a village outside Naples.

A narrow set of exceptions remains. Applicants who formally filed, or had a confirmed consular appointment, by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on 27 March 2025 are still assessed under the previous rules. Applicants with a parent who lived in Italy for two consecutive years as an Italian citizen before their birth or adoption also retain the descent claim. For most diaspora families, neither exception applies.

The Constitutional Court announcement on 12 March 2026 (with the full reasoning deposited on 30 April as Sentenza 63/2026) closed the most significant legal route to overturning the framework. Further challenges remain pending, including hearings in June 2026 on a referral from the Tribunal of Mantova, and a Court of Cassation review of related questions. These may produce clarifications on specific points. They are unlikely to restore the pre-2025 system.

What route to Italian citizenship is still open after Law 74/2025?

A two-year naturalisation route remains open for descendants of an Italian-born parent or grandparent, even when the descent pathway is closed to them. The coverage of Law 74/2025 has focused almost entirely on what was taken away. Less has been said about what the same law opened.

Article 1-bis, paragraph 2 of Law 74/2025 cut the residency requirement for naturalisation, from three years to two, for foreigners whose parent or grandparent is or was Italian by birth.

This is a separate pathway from descent. It does not require an unbroken chain of citizenship. It does not require that the Italian ancestor never naturalised abroad. It requires three things: a parent or grandparent born in Italy as an Italian citizen, a real move to Italy with legal residence registered at a municipality, and two continuous years of that residence before applying.

It is worth being precise about who this serves. The two-year route helps a specific subset of the diaspora: descendants whose Italian-born parent or grandparent emigrated and naturalised abroad. It is the most common pattern in second- and third-generation diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. For descendants whose closest Italian-born ancestor is a great-grandparent or earlier, the two-year route does not apply, and the standard ten-year naturalisation timeline is what remains.

It is also worth noting that this is concessory naturalisation under Article 9 of Law 91/1992. It is a discretionary grant by the Italian state to applicants who meet the eligibility criteria, not an automatic entitlement. In practice, refusal rates for eligible applicants are low, but the grant is a state decision, not a right.

The standard naturalisation timeline for non-EU nationals in Italy is ten years of continuous legal residence. For EU nationals, it is four. For the descendant of an Italian-born parent or grandparent, under the new law, it is two.

Italian citizenship by naturalisation: residency timelines compared

This changes the conversation. For an American whose grandfather was born in Calabria and naturalised in Pittsburgh in 1948, the descent pathway is closed. The standard naturalisation pathway is a decade of physical presence. The two-year route, in practice, is the realistic option for a family that still wants an Italian and EU passport in this generation rather than the next.

“Continuous legal residence” means actual residence. It means registering with a municipality, holding a valid residence permit, and being present in Italy for the qualifying period. It is not a paper exercise. Italy is offering faster citizenship in exchange for a genuine relocation. That trade is the point.

For applicants prepared to make that move, the question becomes: what is the most credible route to establishing legal residence in the first place?

Which Italian visa supports the two-year naturalisation route?

For non-EU descendants with the capital to qualify and a preference for flexibility, the Italian Investor Visa is the most flexible route. It requires no minimum physical presence during the initial permit period, so the family can set up the residency on its own timetable. For others, the elective residence visa, the digital nomad visa, or work-based routes may apply. Each has real trade-offs.

Two honest points before going further. The Investor Visa is the right tool for a specific use case: families who want to put the legal foundation in place now and decide on the timing of the move later. For families who have already decided to relocate immediately and full-time, the elective residence visa is often a lower-friction option, since it requires no capital deployment. The Investor Visa’s advantage is optionality, not universal superiority. The second point is that the Investor Visa, on its own, does not start the two-year naturalisation clock. The clock starts only when the applicant registers as a resident at an Italian municipality and is physically present in the country. The visa establishes the right to do that. The actual residency does the rest.

The elective residence visa is for retirees and others with passive income who do not intend to work. It requires a stable foreign income (currently around €38,000 annually for an individual, higher for families), and successful applicants must spend most of the year in Italy. It works for some profiles and not others.

A standard work visa requires sponsorship by an Italian employer and falls within annual quotas. For self-employed professionals, the lavoro autonomo route is available but quota-constrained and procedurally demanding.

The digital nomad visa, introduced in 2024, is open to certain remote workers who meet income and qualification thresholds. Useful for the right candidate, less so for a retired executive or a family principal whose income structure does not fit.

The Investor Visa, sometimes called the Italian Golden Visa, was introduced in 2017 under Article 26-bis of the Italian immigration code. It is the most flexible of the routes for those with capital, and the one the two-year naturalisation pathway has made more interesting.

Italian visa routes for non-EU descendants: a comparison

Why the Investor Visa fits the two-year naturalisation route

The Investor Visa grants a two-year residence permit, renewable in three-year increments, to non-EU nationals who make a qualifying investment in Italy. There are four routes: €500,000 in the equity of an Italian limited company, €250,000 in an Italian innovative startup, a €1 million philanthropic donation to a project of public interest, or €2 million in Italian government bonds.

A few features set it apart from comparable European programmes:

• No real estate route. This is deliberate. The programme channels foreign capital into the productive economy, not into property speculation.
• Pre-approval before capital is committed. Applicants receive a nulla osta (clearance certificate) from a multi-ministerial committee before transferring funds. The risk of paying for a failed application does not arise.
• Family included. Spouse, dependent children, and dependent parents can join on the same application.
• Three to four months to clearance, with the consular visa stage following.
• No physical presence requirement during the initial permit period.

That last point matters most for descendants pursuing the two-year naturalisation route. The visa can be obtained, the investment made, and the move to Italy planned on the family’s timetable. The two-year residency clock starts later, when the family actually registers as resident at a municipality. The visa and the citizenship clock run separately. The investment provides the legal foundation. The residency, when the family is ready, provides the route to citizenship.

The 2026 budget and the wider context

Two further changes in 2026 affect the calculation.

The 2026 Budget Law, in force from 1 January 2026, raised the headline flat tax for new Italian tax residents from €200,000 to €300,000 per year on foreign-source income, with an additional €50,000 per qualifying family member (up from €25,000). The regime remains available for up to fifteen years for those who have not been Italian tax resident in nine of the prior ten years. Beneficiaries who established residence before 1 January 2026 continue to pay the rate in force at their entry date, either €100,000 or €200,000.

Even at €300,000, the regime remains one of the more predictable instruments in Europe for individuals with substantial foreign-source income, particularly after recent changes to the UK non-dom rules.

The other change is administrative. From 11 January 2026, all long-stay visa applicants must provide biometric fingerprints at Italian consulates. From 10 April 2026, the EU’s Entry/Exit System replaced passport stamps with digital biometric records at all Schengen external borders. The ETIAS pre-authorisation system for visa-exempt visitors is expected to launch in the last quarter of 2026. None of this alters the Investor Visa or the citizenship pathways directly. It does make the rolling-tourist approach to Italy slower and more friction-laden than it was.

Should Italian descendants still pursue Italian citizenship in 2026?

For descendants of an Italian-born parent or grandparent, yes. The descent pathway is closed for most families. The two-year naturalisation pathway is the realistic route forward. Three things are worth keeping in mind.

The first is that the legal framework is settled. The Constitutional Court has ruled. The Ministry of the Interior has issued operational guidance. Consulates and municipalities are processing applications under clear, if narrower, rules. The rules have changed. Waiting for them to change back is not a strategy.

The second is that the two-year pathway is genuinely generous. A non-EU national typically waits a decade for Italian citizenship. A descendant with a documented Italian-born parent or grandparent waits two. That asymmetry is the legislator’s design. Italy has narrowed who can claim Italian identity at a distance, while accelerating it for those willing to come home.

The third is that the path requires a real plan. Two continuous years of legal residence is a serious undertaking. It means a place to live, a tax residence, schools, healthcare registration, and a structured presence in the country. For many families, the right starting point is the investment and visa structure that makes the residency affordable and orderly. The citizenship application comes later, after the clock has run.

At Ariete Capital, we built the firm around a particular view: that Italian residency should follow a sound investment in Italy, and that the investment should stand on its own merits whether or not the residency is taken up. We allocate international capital into established Italian companies on terms that qualify under the €500,000 Investor Visa route. The €250,000 innovative startup route is available for families with a different allocation preference. For descendants weighing the two-year naturalisation pathway, the practical appeal of the structure is straightforward: the investment establishes the legal foundation for residency, and the underlying portfolio is one we would hold regardless of the visa question.

For families considering this pathway, the most useful first conversation is rarely about the visa. It is about whether the investment makes sense on its own terms, what the family’s actual relocation horizon looks like, and what the realistic timeline is. We are happy to have that conversation.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still get Italian citizenship through my great-grandparent?

Generally, no. Law 74/2025 limits citizenship by descent to those with a parent or grandparent born in Italy. Great-grandparents and earlier ancestors no longer create a claim on their own, for applications filed after 27 March 2025. A narrow exception applies if the application or a confirmed consular appointment predates that cutoff, in which case the pre-reform rules continue to govern.

What is the two-year residency route to Italian citizenship?

It is a faster naturalisation pathway introduced under Article 1-bis, paragraph 2 of Law 74/2025. A foreign national with at least one Italian-born parent or grandparent can apply for Italian citizenship after two continuous years of legal residence in Italy, compared to the ten years required for non-EU nationals without Italian ancestry. The applicant must register with a municipality, hold a valid residence permit, and meet language and integration requirements (B1 Italian).

Does the Italian Investor Visa lead to citizenship?

Not directly. The Investor Visa grants residency, which can lead to citizenship through naturalisation. For an investor without Italian ancestry, that takes ten years. For an investor who is also a descendant of an Italian-born parent or grandparent, the two-year route applies, provided the residency is real and continuous. The Investor Visa is most useful for descendants because it does not require physical presence during the initial permit period, so the investment can be set up before the residency clock begins.

What changed about Italy’s flat tax regime in 2026?

The 2026 Budget Law raised the headline flat tax for new Italian tax residents from €200,000 to €300,000 per year on foreign-source income, with an additional €50,000 per qualifying family member (previously €25,000). The change took effect on 1 January 2026. Existing beneficiaries who established Italian tax residence before that date continue to pay the rate that applied at their entry (€100,000 or €200,000). The regime remains available for up to fifteen years.

Can I still apply under the old citizenship rules if I started before March 2025?

Yes, in specific circumstances. Applications formally submitted to a consulate or municipality, court filings, or confirmed consular appointments by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on 27 March 2025 continue to be processed under the pre-reform rules. The cutoff is strict. Inquiries, partial submissions, or appointments scheduled but not confirmed by that deadline do not qualify.

Is the law final after the Constitutional Court ruling of March 2026?

For practical purposes, yes. On 12 March 2026, the Italian Constitutional Court rejected the principal constitutional challenges to Law 74/2025, referred by the Tribunal of Turin. Further challenges remain pending, including a Tribunal of Mantova referral scheduled for June 2026 and a Court of Cassation review of related questions. These may produce clarifications on specific issues, including the so-called “minor issue.” They are unlikely to restore the pre-2025 descent system.

This article reflects publicly available information as of May 2026. Italian citizenship, immigration, and tax law are technical and evolving. Specific cases should be reviewed by qualified Italian counsel and tax advisers.