The Next Passport
Italian Citizenship · Ancestor PathItalian Citizenship Through Your Father
This page is informational only and is not legal advice. Verify your situation with the Italian consulate covering your state of residence before taking action.
Last verified: September 7, 2026 · Maintained by The Next Passport (Warner Creates LLC).
Law 74/2025 may affect this path
Under Article 3-bis of Law 91/1992, anyone born outside Italy who holds another citizenship is treated as never having acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of five saving conditions applies. The ancestor-based condition is a parent or grandparent who holds, or held when they died, exclusively Italian citizenship — not merely one who was born in Italy. Your father is a first-degree ascendant, so lett. c) can apply to him directly. Three of the five close on the same moment, 23:59 Rome time on March 27, 2025: a consular or comune application filed by then (lett. a), an appointment the competent office had already communicated to you by then with the application filed on the appointed day (lett. a-bis), and a judicial claim filed by then (lett. b). The other two are about your ascendants and carry no deadline: a parent or grandparent who holds, or held at death, exclusively Italian citizenship (lett. c), or a parent or adoptive parent — the statute says «un genitore o adottante» — who lived in Italy for two continuous years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before you were born or adopted (lett. d). This is the question that decides this page — check it against your own family's naturalisation records before assuming either answer.
If your father held Italian citizenship at the time of your birth — for example because he was born in Italy and had never lost it — you likely inherited Italian citizenship automatically at birth under jure sanguinis — the right of blood. Italy's Law 91/1992, Article 1, provides that children of an Italian father or mother are citizens by birth. You do not need to apply or register to have inherited this citizenship — it attached at birth — but you do need to have it formally recognized by the Italian government through the consular process.
Losing Italian citizenship is narrower than it sounds. For a naturalization dated on or before August 15, 1992, Article 8 of Law 555/1912 required two things together: the foreign citizenship had to be acquired voluntarily, and he had to have established residence abroad. From August 16, 1992 the rule reverses — Article 11 of Law 91/1992 provides that an Italian citizen who acquires a foreign citizenship keeps the Italian one — so a naturalization from that date onward does not break the chain on its own. Read the whole sentence, though: the same article lets a citizen who resides or takes up residence abroad renounce Italian citizenship, and that deliberate renunciation is the one thing after 1992 that does end it.
Legal basis
- Primary law
- Law 91 of 5 February 1992, Article 1, paragraph 1(a), Article 1(a): citizens by birth include “children of a father or mother who is a citizen.”
- Authority
- Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAECI) — decided today by the competent Italian consulate, and from January 1, 2029 by a central MAECI office in Rome
- Route
- Standard consular route — no judicial proceeding required.
- No 1948 issue
- The 1948 judicial route applies when a female ancestor transmitted citizenship and her child was born before January 1, 1948. Your father is male — this path does not implicate the 1948 rule.
- Processing time
- The consulate's own processing time after your appointment is not published — no consulate or ministry publishes a figure or a dataset for it. What is published is the statutory term for the decision: 36 months under Legge 19 gennaio 2026 n. 11, art. 1 (art. 10 co. 7, D.Lgs. 71/2011). That is an outer bound on the office, not a prediction for your file, and it is separate from the wait to get an appointment.
Check your eligibility
Our free 2-minute eligibility check asks about your father's citizenship and naturalization dates.
Check your eligibility →Documents typically required
- 1
Your father's Italian birth certificate. Request a certified copy (estratto integrale) directly from the Italian comune where your father was born. This is the anchor document — it establishes his Italian citizenship and birthplace.
- 2
Your father's marriage certificate. The marriage certificate linking your father to your mother, apostilled and translated into Italian if issued in the US.
- 3
Naturalization records for your father. Evidence of whether and when your father acquired another citizenship. Which US agency holds it depends on the court and the date. The National Archives holds naturalizations granted by federal courts before October 1991, and says plainly that as a general rule it does not hold naturalizations created in state or local courts — those sit with state archives or the court itself. USCIS holds the duplicate certificate: in a Certificate File (C-File) for naturalizations from September 27, 1906 to March 31, 1956, and in the Alien File (A-File) from April 1, 1956, both requested through its Genealogy Program. If your father never naturalized, the document to ask for is a Certification of Non-Existence of a Record of Naturalization, which only USCIS can issue — the National Archives can issue only a negative search letter, which is not the same thing.
- 4
Your birth certificate. A long-form US birth certificate showing both parents' names. Must be apostilled and accompanied by a certified Italian translation.
- 5
Certified Italian translations. All US-issued documents must be translated into Italian by a qualified sworn translator. The consulate will review both the original apostilled document and the translation at your appointment.
Ready to organize your application?
Start your free eligibility check →Not affiliated with the Italian government or any consulate. Information sourced from Law 91/1992, Art. 1(a) and esteri.it. Verify details with the official consulate before taking action. As of .