Important updates on Italy’s Citizenship-by-Descent Decisions in 2026
The ‘Minor Issue’ and the Tajani Restrictions
By Christian Scali, Italy Access Advisory, with Giovanni Imbergamo, Studio Legale
Two rulings out of Italy's courts this summer are worth separating clearly, since most of what is circulating about them isn't.
On July 26, 2026, Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation published Decision No. 24045, from its United Civil Sections. The decision resolves what has become known as the “minor issue.”
The question was narrow but consequential: when an Italian-born parent naturalizes in another country while a child is still a minor, does that naturalization sever the child's claim to Italian citizenship?
For several years, the Ministry of the Interior's administrative guidance said yes. This position led consulates and lower courts to reject or freeze a substantial number of applications. The United Sections rejected that interpretation. A non-emancipated minor born abroad to an Italian citizen, in a country that grants citizenship by birthright, is a dual citizen from birth and retains Italian citizenship even if the parent later naturalizes elsewhere, absent a specific treaty provision, or the individual's own renunciation after reaching adulthood
The ruling is clearest in its application to judicial petitions filed before March 27, 2025, which the court held remain governed by the prior law regardless of the newer restrictions passed that year. How the decision applies to cases filed after that date is a genuinely open question, and one worth watching.
The Constitutional Court’s decision on the 2025 citizenship restrictions
The second matter is unrelated, though it is frequently reported alongside the first. In March 2026, the Constitutional Court ruled on a challenge to Law 74/2025 (the so-called Tajani Decree) which imposed new generational and connection-based limits on citizenship. Although it is often described as a “two-generation cap,” that description is incomplete. The statute contains several exceptions, including protections for certain applications filed by March 27, 2025, cases involving a parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship, and cases involving qualifying residence in Italy by a parent or adoptive parent.
The ruling is more precise and nuanced than "the law was upheld" reporting might at first suggest. The Court rejected some claims on their merits and declined to examine others at all, a distinction that matters for those tracking which arguments remain available.
The ruling did more than resolve a question of retroactivity. For over a century, Italian courts treated citizenship by descent as a status acquired at birth, with any later recognition considered merely declarative. Ruling 63/2026 adopted different language, describing certain descendants as never having acquired citizenship in the first place. This constitutes a shift several legal scholars have characterized as a genuine change in how the right itself is understood, not simply a ruling on when the new law applies.
No suspension of the law itself occurred or is presently being considered. The two-generation cap has been in force since March 2025 and remains so today. Separately, on July 23, 2026, the Constitutional Court referred a narrower question to the European Court of Justice, arising from three unrelated cases. These cases involved descendants whose Italian ancestors never naturalized abroad at all.
The referral does not suspend Article 3-bis. Nor does it automatically extend filing, appeal, or procedural deadlines in pending matters. The Italian restrictions remain operative unless and until a competent court determines otherwise.
The referral is nevertheless significant because the Court of Justice’s interpretation of European Union law will guide the Constitutional Court when it resumes consideration of the referred issue. The timing and ultimate scope of that decision cannot yet be stated with certainty.
Why the distinction matters
It is easy to see how these two threads get merged into a single narrative of "citizenship is easier now." Both involve the Cassazione or the Constitutional Court; both concern citizenship by descent; both surfaced within the same several-week window.
But they address different legal problems.
The minor-issue ruling restores a claim that a specific administrative interpretation had wrongly cut off. The Tajani cap remains exactly as restrictive as it was when enacted, with only a narrow, unresolved question sitting in front of the European courts.
Reading one as evidence about the other risks acting on information that isn't quite accurate, a familiar problem in an area of law that touches people well beyond Italy's own borders.
What both rulings share, properly understood, is that they belong to a single, well-defined field: citizenship by descent, governed by ancestry and blood relation under Italian nationality law. That field runs on entirely different rules than the ones governing residency, property ownership, or business investment in Italy.
For anyone with a pending citizenship claim, or family history that might be affected by either ruling, the practical guidance is straightforward: these are genuinely developing questions, and the specifics of an individual case - when an application was filed, which generation is at issue, which court has jurisdiction - matter more than the headlines suggest. If you are in the process or considering beginning the process of obtaining Italian citizenship by descent, you should contact an attorney competent in this area of the law, as there are procedural distinctions and pros and cons regarding which avenue to follow: administrative or judicial.
For everyone else, the accurate version is also the simpler one: two courts settled two different, narrow legal questions this summer, and neither reopened nor restricted the broader landscape beyond the specific facts each addressed.Readers interested in the underlying legal reasoning can review the Supreme Court's Decision No. 24045/2026, the Constitutional Court's Judgment No. 63/2026, and Constitutional Court Order No. 147/2026.
Giovanni Imbergamo is the founder of Studio Legale Imbergamo in Rome, where his practice spans civil, commercial, and cross-border matters and serves as Of Counsel to Christian Scali’s law firm - Scali Rasmussen - on Italian legal matters.