Do You Have an Ancestor Who Changed Citizenship?
If you are applying for Italian citizenship through your ancestors and your claim involves the so-called Minor Issue — the question of whether a parent’s naturalization extinguished their minor child’s Italian citizenship — you are not alone. Thousands of families are waiting for the same answer. On 14 April 2026, the Italian Supreme Court heard a landmark case that could resolve this debate once and for all. The decision is expected within 4-6 weeks from that date.
In most cases, naturalization happened through a formal process — a sworn pledge of allegiance to the new country, which under Italian law meant giving up Italian citizenship and, with it, the right to pass it on to their children. That was the rule under Article 8 of the Italian Citizenship Law of 1912. The practical consequence: if your ancestor naturalized before their child reached adulthood, the line of transmission was considered broken, and their descendants would not be entitled to Italian citizenship.
That, at least, was the starting point. The reality today is considerably more complex.
What the Law Has Always Said — And Where Ambiguity Crept In
The 1912 Citizenship Law contained two provisions that, read together, created a long-standing interpretive debate.
Article 7 recognized that a child born abroad to an Italian parent could hold dual citizenship from birth: Italian by descent, and foreign by virtue of being born in a country that grants citizenship by place of birth (jus soli), as in the United States and most of the Americas.
Article 12, paragraph 2, provided that a minor child would lose Italian citizenship if the parent naturalized abroad — but only if the child thereby acquired a foreign citizenship as a result of the parent’s naturalization.
For over a century, the consistent reading was straightforward: a child who was already a dual citizen at birth did not acquire a new foreign citizenship when the parent naturalized — they already had it. Therefore, that child kept their Italian citizenship. Only children born in Italy, who held solely Italian citizenship, lost it along with the parent.
This interpretation was applied uniformly by administrative offices and courts for decades. Then, from around 2022, a different reading began to emerge.
The Conflict: Two Competing Interpretations
In a series of recent rulings, some judges took a different view: that Article 12, paragraph 2, applies to all minor children of a naturalizing parent — including those who were dual citizens from birth. Under this reading, it does not matter that the child already held foreign citizenship; what matters is that the parent’s naturalization severed the Italian citizenship link while the child was still a minor.
The Italian government embraced this stricter interpretation and made it binding on all its offices through the Ministry of the Interior Circular of 3 October 2024, which states that a naturalizing parent simultaneously caused the loss of Italian citizenship for their minor child — even if that child was born in a jus soli country and already held foreign citizenship from birth. All such cases are now treated as an interruption of the citizenship transmission line.
The result has been a sharp increase in rejected applications and growing confusion among thousands of families who had believed — often for years — that their claim was well-founded.
It is important to note that this Circular is not legally binding on Italian courts. However, it effectively closes the administrative route for many applicants and has discouraged a significant number from pursuing their claim at all.
The 2025 Reform: A New Layer of Complexity
While the debate over the 1912 law was still unresolved, the Italian government introduced a further and far-reaching change. In March 2025, Decree-Law no. 36 of 28 March 2025, subsequently converted into Law no. 74 of 23 May 2025, fundamentally restructured the rules for recognizing Italian citizenship by descent.
The new law establishes that anyone born abroad who also holds another citizenship is considered never to have acquired Italian citizenship — unless they had already submitted a formal application for recognition, either administratively or through the courts, by 27 March 2025 at 23:59.
This creates a hard deadline with potentially retroactive effect: people who were born before the law came into force, and who under the previous framework would have been entitled to Italian citizenship by descent, may now find themselves excluded — simply because they had not yet formally applied before the cutoff.
The constitutional legitimacy of this provision has already been challenged. In March 2026, the Constitutional Court considered the question and indicated — in advance of its formal judgment — that the challenges raised on grounds of arbitrary distinction and retroactivity are unfounded. This does not resolve every interpretive question about how the 2025 law applies in practice, but it significantly narrows the scope for challenging it on constitutional grounds.
Where Things Stand Today: The April 2026 Hearing
On 14 April 2026, the Court of Cassation sitting in its highest formation — the Joint Divisions (Sezioni Unite) — heard both of these questions simultaneously.
The first concerns the correct interpretation of Articles 7 and 12 of the 1912 law: does the naturalization of a parent during a child’s minority automatically extinguish the child’s Italian citizenship, even if that child was already a dual citizen from birth?
The second concerns the temporal reach of the 2025 reform: can it be applied to people born before it came into force, whose citizenship status arose before any application was made?
The fact that both questions have been referred to the Joint Divisions — the body of the Supreme Court charged with resolving entrenched interpretive conflicts — signals the exceptional weight of what is at stake. The ruling is expected by June 2026.
What This Means for You
The landscape has changed significantly. If you have not yet filed a formal application — whether at a consulate, a municipality, or through the Italian courts — and your claim rests on a line of descent involving an ancestor who naturalized during the minority of their child, your position is now affected by both the 2024 Circular and the 2025 reform.
The Supreme Court’s forthcoming judgment may clarify the law in your favour. But waiting is no longer cost-free: the 2025 cutoff has already passed, and the Constitutional Court’s preliminary indication suggests that deadline will stand.
Every case turns on specific dates, family circumstances, and procedural history. If you are unsure whether you are affected — or what your realistic options are — book a Consultation Call for an individual assessment of your case and prospects.
For a full explanation of how naturalization works and who is affected, see our earlier guide here.