Italy Narrowed the Citizenship-by-Descent Door — and Opened a New One Marked “B1”
For over a century, having an Italian great-grandparent meant something extraordinary: a legal path to an Italian passport, with no limit on how many generations back the line ran. In 2025, Italy ended that era — and millions of descendants in Argentina, Brazil, the United States and beyond woke up to a changed map.
But here’s what most of the panicked headlines missed: the same law that narrowed the old door quietly opened a new one. And the key to it is the Italian language.
Here’s the honest picture, from the official texts.
What changed: the two-generation limit
Under Decree-Law 36/2025 — converted into Law 74/2025 in May — citizenship by descent (iure sanguinis) is now automatic only if you have a parent or grandparent born in Italy. Great-grandchildren and beyond, who qualified for generations, no longer do.
Two honest details matter enormously:
The filing date is everything. Applications and court claims filed by 27 March 2025 are processed under the old, unlimited rules. Filed after? New rules apply.
The law is under constitutional review. Italy’s Constitutional Court heard challenges to the reform in March 2026, and rulings are pending. We won’t predict the outcome — anyone who claims to know is guessing. What we can tell you is what the law says today.
What opened: the door most people haven’t noticed
Buried in the same law is Article 1-bis — and for the third and fourth generation, it changes the story completely. Italy officially designated seven “states of historic Italian emigration,” based on where more than 100,000 registered Italian citizens live today: Argentina (989,901 registered Italian citizens — the largest community on earth), Brazil (682,300), the United States (241,056), Australia (166,848), Canada (148,251), Venezuela (116,396), and Uruguay (115,658).
If you’re a citizen of one of these seven countries and a descendant of an Italian citizen, two new rights apply to you:
- Work entry outside the quotas. Italy caps most work immigration through its annual decreto flussi quota lottery. Descendants from these seven countries can now enter and work in Italy outside those quotas entirely.
- Citizenship after just two years of residence. The normal naturalization clock for non-EU citizens is ten years. For those with a parent or grandparent who is or was an Italian citizen by birth, the law cuts the residence requirement to two years.
Move to Italy, work, live two years, naturalize. The automatic passport is gone for the third generation — but a realistic, legal, faster-than-ever route took its place.
And that route runs through one requirement the headlines barely mention: naturalization requires certified Italian at B1 level.
The language gate, honestly explained
Since Law 132/2018, Italian citizenship by residence or marriage requires proof of Italian at B1 level or higher — through one of four recognized certifications. The two most widely available are CILS B1 Cittadinanza (University for Foreigners of Siena) and CELI 2 (University for Foreigners of Perugia).
Three honest facts about these exams that we see people learn too late:
They are not interchangeable with the residence-permit test. The long-term EU residence permit requires only A2. Citizenship requires B1. Every year, people prepare for the wrong level. Know which one your goal actually needs.
CILS B1 Cittadinanza is all-or-nothing. You need at least 7/12 in every section AND 28/48 overall — and unlike the standard CILS, there is no banking of passed sections. Miss one section, retake everything. It’s a fair exam, but it punishes unbalanced preparation.
The clock is slower than you think. CELI results can take around three months, and the certificate itself up to four or five. If your application window is next spring, your exam sitting is this autumn. Plan backwards.
One more deadline, for one more group
If you (or your parent) once held Italian citizenship and lost it automatically before 15 August 1992 — common among emigrants who naturalized abroad — the same 2025 law opened a simplified reacquisition window: a declaration filed by 31 December 2027. That’s a real, hard deadline, and it will not care who found out about it too late.
What to actually do
- Check your line honestly. Parent or grandparent born in Italy → the direct descent route may still be yours. Further back → the two-year residence path is your realistic road, if you hold citizenship of one of the seven listed countries.
- Time your paperwork against the real clocks — the 2027 reacquisition deadline, the slow certificate timelines, your consulate’s queues.
- Start the language now. B1 is reachable for a motivated beginner in a year — and it’s the one requirement entirely in your hands. A requirement is never a guarantee of citizenship; residence, income and records all matter. But without B1, the new door doesn’t open at all.
That last step is exactly what we built AlmiItalian for: honest CILS and CELI preparation on each exam’s real rules — including a B1 Cittadinanza module that trains you against the actual all-or-nothing scoring, with estimates that are always labelled estimates — at almiitalian.almiworld.com.
Italy didn’t close the door on its diaspora. It moved the door — and wrote “B1” on it. The people who walk through will be the ones who saw it early and started preparing honestly.