Italy’s Constitutional Court has now sent a strong signal: the country’s sharp restriction on citizenship by descent is, at least for now, legally standing.
With its press release of 12 March 2026, the Court rejected the constitutional challenges raised by the Tribunal of Turin against Law 74/2025, the measure that reshaped Italy’s jure sanguinis framework and imposed new limits on who can still claim citizenship through Italian ancestry.
While the Court has not yet published its full reasoning, the message is already clear: the reform has survived a major legal attack.
For many families abroad, especially in countries with large Italian diasporas such as Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Canada, and Australia, this marks the end of a long-standing assumption: that Italian citizenship could be passed down indefinitely across generations, provided the bloodline could be documented.
That assumption no longer applies in the same way.
The practical effect is significant. For many descendants born abroad who had not already filed by the 27 March 2025 deadline, the old broad jure sanguinis route is no longer open.
Italy has moved away from an expansive ancestry-based model and toward a more restrictive framework linked to recent generations, effective ties, and specific statutory conditions.
Although the Court has now rejected the Turin challenge, three additional constitutional questions raised by the courts of Mantua and Campobasso, are still pending before the Constitutional Court. This means the legal debate is not yet fully exhausted, and a narrow window of hope remains for those who are still following developments closely.
Still, any realistic reading of the current situation requires caution. The Court’s latest intervention shows that it is not inclined to dismantle the reform easily. So while further proceedings may still shape the margins of the new law, they should not be mistaken for a likely return to the old regime.
For prospective applicants, this is the key takeaway: the dream is not entirely dead, but it is now much narrower, much more technical, and much less forgiving.
This is no longer a matter of simply proving that an Italian ancestor existed somewhere in the family tree. Success now depends on whether a person falls within one of the limited categories still preserved under the new law.
The first and safest category is made up of those whose citizenship application (whether administrative or judicial) had already been filed by 11:59 p.m. Rome time on 27 March 2025. For them, the previous rules continue to apply. These applicants remain protected by the transitional framework.
The second category includes those who may still qualify because a parent or grandparent held, or held at death, exclusively Italian citizenship.
This is one of the most debated aspects of the new law and, in practice, one of the most restrictive. In many emigrant families, the relevant ancestor naturalized abroad or acquired a second nationality, and that may now prevent transmission if the law requires exclusive Italian citizenship at the relevant level.
A third route may still exist where a parent or adoptive parent resided in Italy for at least two consecutive years after acquiring Italian citizenship and before the applicant’s birth or adoption. That exception keeps the door open for some families, but only where a real and provable connection to Italy can be demonstrated.
What Descendants Should Take Away From the Ruling
The legal environment has changed profoundly. Further litigation will not quickly restore the previous system. The Constitutional Court has already shown a willingness to uphold the reform against major constitutional objections.
Some space for legal evolution does remain, however. The pending questions from Mantua and Campobasso matter precisely because they show that judicial scrutiny is not finished. Depending on how those issues are framed and decided, certain aspects of the law could still be revisited or narrowed.
Anyone who still hopes to qualify must now treat the matter as a highly technical legal assessment, not as a routine ancestry application. The determinative questions are no longer only genealogical. They now include timing, prior filings, the citizenship status of parents and grandparents, past naturalizations, residency links with Italy, and the precise structure of the line of transmission.
For many people, the answer will unfortunately be no. That is exactly what the reform aimed to achieve: to stop the potentially unlimited expansion of citizenship claims across generations with no concrete connection to Italy.
But for others, a path may still exist.
Some applicants are protected because they filed in time. Others may still fit within the narrower statutory routes. And others still may choose to watch the remaining constitutional proceedings carefully, knowing that the legal chapter has not been completely closed.
The ruling does not merely confirm a controversial reform. It changes the psychology of citizenship by descent itself. Italy no longer treats citizenship as an indefinitely transmissible status based on distant ancestry alone. It is now a more restricted legal condition, tied to clearer legislative boundaries and, increasingly, to evidence of a closer connection with Italy.
For those who had hoped to qualify one day, the message is undoubtedly sobering.
For those who still can, or who may still benefit from the unresolved cases ahead, the message is more nuanced: the road has become steeper, but not every door has been closed yet.
