Canada and Denmark ask nothing of you when you take a second citizenship. Other countries require that you tell them, and some attach a fine, a criminal case or the loss of your citizenship to silence.
The report does a different job in each of these countries. Russia uses it to track citizens who may lawfully have two citizenships.
In India, Japan and Kazakhstan, the law ends your citizenship on the day you take another, and the report closes the file. Spaniards abroad who take another nationality and never file a declaration can lose their Spanish citizenship.
What silence costs you depends on which of these jobs your home country’s rule does.
Three kinds of reporting rule
Under one kind of rule, the state wants to know about your new citizenship, and taking it does not end the old one automatically. Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Latvia follow this model.
In a second kind, your citizenship ends by law when you take another. You must then report the loss or hand back your documents, as in Kazakhstan, India, Japan, South Korea, Lithuania and China.
Under both of these kinds, your status as a citizen is the same whether you file the report or not.
Spain and Egypt use a third kind, where a declaration is the condition for retaining your citizenship. IMI has covered which countries enforce a ban on dual citizenship and how renouncing a citizenship works in practice.
Russia makes silence a crime
Russia allows dual citizenship. Its 2023 citizenship law, Federal Law No. 138-FZ, requires that citizens report a new foreign citizenship within 60 days.
A foreign residence permit, or any other document giving the right to live permanently in another country, triggers the same duty. You file with the Interior Ministry inside Russia, or with a Russian consulate abroad.
Citizens who are abroad when the 60 days end must file with the Interior Ministry within 60 days of entering Russia, the law says. A consulate cannot accept the notice once the 60 days have passed, according to Russia’s consulate in Warsaw.
The penalties date from a 2014 law. Filing late, or with incomplete or knowingly false information, is an administrative offense with a fine of 500 to 1,000 rubles.
Not filing at all is a crime under Article 330.2 of the Criminal Code. It brings a fine of up to 200,000 rubles or up to one year of income, or up to 400 hours of compulsory labor.
The Interior Ministry penalized 4,585 Russians under the administrative rule in 2023, almost double the 2,584 administrative reports of 2022, Kommersant reported. Courts convicted 52 people under Article 330.2 between 2022 and mid-2025, according to court statistics reviewed by the outlet iStories.
Lawyer Evgeny Smirnov told iStories that such cases are often opened. They are easy to start through screening at the border, he said.
In one of his cases, the evidence was a passport found in luggage.
At the end of 2025, the Foreign Ministry posted a draft law for public comment on the government’s regulation portal. It covers Russians who live permanently abroad, iStories reported, citing Verstka.
They would have to notify a consulate within 60 days of receiving a foreign residence permit or citizenship. The current law lets a citizen who is abroad wait until the next entry into Russia.
If the draft becomes law, the change takes effect in 2028. People who have not come to Russia and have not reported would then have one year to register with a consulate.
Public comment on the draft ended in mid-January. By late September, the portal showed no later stage for it.
Belarus, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Latvia
Belarus added a reporting duty in 2023. Citizens who acquire a foreign citizenship or a residence permit must tell the internal affairs authorities or a diplomatic mission within three months.
The duty also covers any other foreign document that grants benefits because of a person’s political or religious views or ethnic origin.
Aleksei Begun, then head of the Interior Ministry’s citizenship and migration department, said in 2024 that failing to report brought no liability yet. He added that the ministry was working to introduce an administrative penalty.
Belarus’s Code of Administrative Offenses, as last amended in 2026, contains no such penalty.
Azerbaijan’s citizenship law gives citizens one month to report a new citizenship to the authorities in writing. The same law lists the voluntary acquisition of another citizenship as a ground for losing Azerbaijani citizenship, though the loss is not automatic.
In 2020, Azerbaijan removed the criminal penalty for failing to report from its Criminal Code. Since then, most people who take another citizenship do not contact the State Migration Service, the agency told RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani service.
Turkey asks for a written notice to the local population directorate, or to a consulate abroad. Its citizenship regulation sets no deadline and no fine.
Until you file, marriages, births and other civil events under your other citizenship do not enter the Turkish population register.
Latvia requires that citizens notify the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs when they acquire another citizenship.
Roberts Valpiters, Managing Partner at EU Law Firm in Riga, notes that dual citizenship in Latvia “is not a general right.”
Under Section 9 of the Citizenship Law, a citizen retains Latvian citizenship after acquiring that of another member state of the European Union, the European Free Trade Association or NATO. Citizenship of Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, or a country with a dual citizenship agreement with Latvia has the same effect.
Section 9 also protects a citizen who acquired another citizenship automatically through marriage, or through adoption. For any other country, the citizen needs permission from the Cabinet of Ministers, given on grounds of important state interests.
The Cabinet must decide within a year, and the citizen cannot appeal its decision.
Every other citizen must apply to renounce Latvian citizenship within 30 days of acquiring the new one, under Section 23.
Under Section 24, Valpiters explains, Latvia can revoke the citizenship of a person who does not apply. It cannot do so if the person would then become stateless.
Someone who loses Latvian citizenship this way can regain it only by naturalizing, after a wait of at least five years, under Section 25.
If the person does not appeal the revocation, the five years start when the appeal period ends. A failed appeal moves the start to the date that the court judgment takes effect.
Where the law has already ended your citizenship
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan’s new Constitution, which took effect in 2026, says that a citizen cannot have dual or multiple citizenship. The citizenship law ends Kazakh citizenship when a person acquires another.
The same law requires that the person report the new citizenship within 30 calendar days and hand in the Kazakh passport or identity card.
Failing to report, or reporting late, brings a fine of 100 monthly calculation indices (MCI), the unit Kazakhstan uses to set fines, or expulsion from the country. Article 496 of the Administrative Offenses Code sets the penalty.
The code sets a larger fine, together with expulsion, for civil servants and for managers in state bodies and state-owned companies.
One case began at a border checkpoint, where a man who had taken Russian citizenship had not reported it, Zakon.kz reported in 2025. He showed the court that he had come to withdraw his pension savings.
Citing his family ties in Kazakhstan, the court fined him 100 MCI and cut the fine by 30%.
India
India’s Citizenship Act of 1955 ends Indian citizenship when a citizen voluntarily acquires another. The Indian consulate in Istanbul tells new foreign citizens that they have to “immediately surrender” the Indian passport so that it can be cancelled.
Traveling on an Indian passport, or obtaining one, after acquiring foreign citizenship is an offense under the Passports Act, 1967, according to the Indian consulate in Jeddah. The fines grow with what you did with the passport.
The Istanbul consulate lists no fine for retaining the passport for up to three years. Past that point, the fine is 10,000 rupees.
Each trip on the Indian passport after a three-month grace period costs another 10,000 rupees, and the fines for trips stop at 50,000 rupees. A passport reissued after you took foreign citizenship adds 25,000 rupees.
People who acquired a foreign citizenship before June 2010 receive a surrender certificate, and those who acquired it later receive a renunciation certificate. You need the certificate to apply for an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card, according to the consulate in Vancouver.
China
China’s Nationality Law ends Chinese nationality automatically when a citizen who has settled abroad acquires a foreign nationality of their own free will (Article 9). It sets no reporting deadline.
The file closes instead at the household registration, or hukou, which is the basis for the national identity card.
Rules that the Ministry of Public Security issued in 2021 require that a former citizen apply to the local police station to cancel the hukou. The former citizen also hands back the identity card, and the rules set no deadline.
In Guangdong, a provincial public security notice covers foreign nationals of Chinese origin who apply for a visa.
Officers who find an uncancelled hukou must tell the applicant to cancel it. The applicant hands in the identity card at the police station and receives a certificate showing the hukou was cancelled, which the visa application then needs.
The same notice lets employers and residents’ committees report former residents who settled abroad years ago. The police cancel the hukou after checking.
A person who has lost Chinese nationality under Article 9 must travel to China on a foreign passport with a Chinese visa, according to China’s embassy in London.
IMI reported on a Chinese billionaire who drew Beijing’s attention over his Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenship. A later IMI column explains how giving up a hukou differs from giving up Chinese citizenship.
Japan and South Korea
Japan’s Nationality Act ends Japanese nationality when a citizen acquires a foreign nationality by choice. The Family Register Act then requires a notification of the loss within one month of learning of it, or three months if the person was abroad at that time.
The person, a spouse or a relative within the fourth degree may file. Missing the deadline without good reason brings a non-criminal fine of up to 50,000 yen.
Japan’s embassy in Washington warns that using an old Japanese passport, or applying for a new one, after learning of the loss can lead to punishment.
Korea applies the same loss rule. Under its Nationality Act, a citizen who voluntarily acquires a foreign nationality loses Korean nationality at that moment and must report the loss to the Minister of Justice.
A spouse or a relative within the fourth degree must also report the loss within one month of learning of it. The Act on Registration of Family Relations sets that duty, and it fines a missed report without good cause.
Lithuania
Lithuania ends Lithuanian citizenship on the date a person acquires another, except in cases its law provides for. The person must inform the Migration Department in writing within two months, through the Migris online system.
In Spain and Egypt, the declaration saves your citizenship
Spaniards who live abroad and voluntarily acquire another nationality lose Spanish nationality three years after acquiring it. They avoid the loss by declaring to the Civil Registry, within those three years, that they want to retain it, under Article 24 of the Civil Code.
The rule does not apply when the new nationality is that of an Ibero-American country, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea or Portugal.
Egypt’s rule is narrower. Egyptians need permission from the Minister of Interior before acquiring a foreign nationality, under Law No. 26 of 1975.
With permission, the new nationality ends the Egyptian one, unless the permission also allows retention and the person declares within one year a wish to retain it. Without permission, the person remains Egyptian in every respect, unless the cabinet decides to strip that nationality.
Where no duty exists
Canada has no process at all. “You don’t apply for dual citizenship, and there is no related certificate,” according to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
United States nationality law does not specifically refer to dual nationality, according to the US embassy in Japan. IMI reported earlier in 2026 that the IRS was considering a dual citizenship checkbox on Form 1040, citing Reuters.
The IRS later posted a draft of the 2026 Form 1040 with no such box. Its citizenship question asks whether you are a US citizen, a US national, or a non-citizen with permission to work in the US.
Denmark had a notification duty and dropped it. Danes who acquire a foreign citizenship no longer need to notify the Danish authorities, under a law that took effect in 2015, according to Denmark’s foreign ministry.
Since 2024, Germans who apply for and acquire a foreign citizenship no longer lose German citizenship or need permission to retain it, according to the Federal Foreign Office.
Singapore and Malaysia set no reporting duty. The constitutions of Singapore and Malaysia instead let the government deprive a citizen who voluntarily acquires another citizenship, by order.
Before your second citizenship comes through
Find out which of the three models your home country follows before the new country grants your citizenship. The deadline counts from the day of acquisition in Russia, Kazakhstan and Lithuania, and from receipt of the documents in Belarus.
For Russians and Belarusians, the duty can begin before any second citizenship, because a foreign residence permit also triggers it. Ask for proof that you filed, and store it with your citizenship papers.
If you are Indian, the fines attach to the old passport, and Kazakhstan fines anyone who uses a Kazakh passport after losing citizenship. Surrender the old passport promptly, and never travel on it again.
Spaniards abroad have three years to file the declaration with the Civil Registry.
Confirm the rule again near your grant date. Belarus has said it plans a penalty, and Russia’s draft law would shorten the time that citizens abroad have to report.
