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ITALIAN CITIZENSHIP

Who is entitled to Italian citizenship by residency and how do you apply?

Living in Italy for a number of years will make you eligible for citizenship by residency, or naturalisation. But there are other requirements you’ll need to meet to become an Italian 'cittadino'.

Published: 31 July 2024 15:31 CEST
Updated: 3 August 2024 06:06 CEST

Italian flag waving in the wind with a lake in the background

Citizenship by residency is one of three routes available to foreign nationals to become Italian citizens. Photo by Anatol Rurac on Unsplash

There are many practical benefits to obtaining Italian citizenship, including freedom of movement across the EU, free access to Italy’s healthcare system and the right to vote in Italian elections.

Further, the Italian passport is considered to be one of the world’s “most powerful” as it grants visa-free entry to more countries in the world than almost any other passport.

But if you’re not so lucky as to have an Italian ancestor (citizenship by ancestry) or to be married to an Italian national (citizenship by marriage), your only remaining path to becoming an Italian cittadino will be citizenship by right (also known as ‘naturalisation’).

Though it is often regarded as the most complex way to gain Italian citizenship, this is a popular route among aspiring citizens: of the 121,457 people that were granted Italian citizenship in 2021, nearly 51,000 people (42 percent) qualified via residency in Italy.

As with the two other citizenship routes however, there are a number of stringent requirements that would-be citizens need to meet.

Who can apply?

As suggested by the name, you need to prove that you’ve legally lived in Italy for a minimum period of time in order to apply for Italian citizenship by residency.

Italian flag hanging by building in city centre

Italy’s citizenship by residency route requires most applicants to take an Italian language test. Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

The length of time you have to live in Italy before you can apply depends on your nationality.

Non-EU nationals (including Brits following Brexit): 10 years
EU nationals: four years.
Refugees or stateless persons: five years.
People with an Italian parent or grandparent: three years (citizenship by ancestry claims may also be accessible in this case).
People born in Italy to foreign parents: three years of legal residency as an adult (unless they’ve spent the first 18 years of their lives in Italy, which makes them eligible for a faster Ius Soli citizenship route, to be completed before they turn 19).

Legal resident status is taken to begin from the date of registration with Italy’s Anagrafe registry and must be uninterrupted, meaning you can travel abroad but must keep residency in Italy.

What are the other requirements?

As with the marriage route, most applicants must prove proficiency in the Italian language at B1 level (lower-intermediate level) or higher by taking a test.

For info on exactly what the test involves and where you can take it, see our guide.

If you hold an EU long-term residence permit (permesso di soggiorno per soggiornanti di lungo periodo) or have studied in Italy and own a qualification issued by an Italian institution recognised by the Education Ministry, you are exempt from the requirement.

To qualify for citizenship by residency, you must also provide proof of income produced and taxed in Italy for the previous three years.

Your yearly income cannot be lower than €8.263,31 if you’re not married and without children, or €11.362,05 if you’re married, plus an additional €516 for each child you may have.

If you don’t have an income, or if your yearly income does not meet the threshold, you can indicate somebody else’s provided that they are part of the same household.

Finally, applicants must prove that they have no past criminal convictions by submitting criminal records for all countries they’ve previously lived in.

How to apply

The application for citizenship by residency must be submitted through the Italian Interior Ministry’s website, which you’ll only be able to access with SPID digital identity credentials.

Italian Air Force unit Frecce Tricolori (Tricolour Arrows) leave trails of green, white and red smoke over Piazza Venezia in Rome

Citizenship by residency applications must be submitted on the Italian Interior Ministry’s website. Photo by LAURENT EMMANUEL / AFP

After logging in, you’ll be asked to complete the relevant application form, upload your supporting documents and then submit the application.

You’ll be asked to produce the original documents at the local prefecture office (prefettura) at a later stage.

The application costs €250, which can be paid directly online or at a post office.

The paperwork you’ll need

Supporting documents for Italian citizenship by residency generally include:

Valid ID
Birth certificate, which must be translated and legalised by the Italian consulate in your country of origin
Residency permit (for non-EU nationals)
Residency certificate, known as storico di residenza in Italian
Certificate of knowledge of the Italian language at B1 level unless exemptions apply
Proof of income (generally produced via Italian tax returns)
Criminal records translated and legalised by the Italian consulate in your home country
Receipt of payment of the €250 fee

How long does the process take?

Once you submit your application, Italian authorities have up to 24 months to process it, though they can extend the timeframe to 36 months pending the issuance of an extension notice.

Unfortunately, there currently is no way for applicants to expedite the process.

Italian immigration lawyers strongly advise applicants to carefully prepare all necessary documents before applying to avoid possible delays later on.

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What I learned from applying for Italian citizenship by marriage

Of the three main routes to obtaining Italian citizenship, marriage is by far the least commonly taken.

Only 12 percent of all applications approved in 2021, the last year for which data is available, came via marriage or civil union to an Italian national – equal to about 14,500 people.

The relatively small number able to take the marriage route are arguably lucky: it tends to be quicker and simpler than obtaining Italian citizenship by almost any other means.

While ancestry and naturalisation via residency together account for the vast majority of applications filed, these paths involve more complex paperwork, higher costs, or a much longer wait time to become eligible.

However, there were changes to the law in 2018 designed to make it tougher to obtain citizenship via marriage. Likely as a result, the number of applications dropped to its lowest point in a decade in 2018 and 2019.

Below I’ve shared some of what I’ve learned so far from my own experience of my recent application for citizenship through marriage. I hope this will save you some time and stress, and perhaps help to make obtaining your Italian passport that little bit easier.

(Note that this article focuses on applying for Italian citizenship via marriage from within Italy, as that was my experience. But you can also apply if you live abroad: we have a separate guide to doing so here.)

Start earlier than you think you need to

After getting married in 2018, I finally filed my application for Italian citizenship in 2023. But, legally, I could’ve done so a lot sooner.

At the moment, the law states that the spouse of an Italian national can submit an application for citizenship after two years of marriage if they are resident in Italy, or three years if they live outside of Italy.

If you have a child together, the waiting time is reduced by half.

I began putting my own application together in 2021, and it took me around two years before I had everything ready to submit. This probably isn’t typical, as the timing wasn’t great: the combined impact of the pandemic and being in the middle of a house purchase slowed things down.

You may be able to do it in a much shorter time, though it’s not something you can do all at once. In any case, the sooner you start, the better.

Start with the language test

You’ll need electronic copies of the following documents ready for your application:

Valid identity document
Valid Italian residency permit
Marriage certificate (‘estratto per riassunto del registro dei matrimoni’)
Birth certificate (with sworn translation into Italian)
Criminal record from your home country and any third countries of residence (with sworn translation into Italian)
Proof of language proficiency
Payment receipt for application fee and revenue stamp

I’d suggest starting with the language certificate, for several reasons: it takes the longest to obtain, it doesn’t expire, and many people say it’s the most daunting item on the list.

The B1 Italian language exam is usually one of the most daunting tasks for people applying for citizenship by marriage

The B1 Italian language exam is usually one of the most daunting tasks for people applying for citizenship by marriage. Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash

Most applicants (see here for the few exemptions) need to prove that they speak Italian to at least B1 level, which is equal to a lower intermediate level, or basic conversational Italian.

As speaking at least some Italian is essential to everyday life in Italy, many people who’ve been here for a few years can probably meet this requirement without much difficulty. Others may want to take a language course in preparation.

I found that all the language schools offering the B1 cittadinanza exam (a simplified version of the B1 Italian exam for the purposes of the application) in my area required you to pay for a block of six language lessons along with the examination fee, whether you needed them or not.

Most language schools in Italy and abroad can help prepare you for the B1 test, though you’ll need to make sure the school you sit the exam with is accredited by one of the four recognised Italian institutions.

Find out more about the exam here.

Once you pass, you’ll have to wait a couple of months for the certificate to arrive so that you can attach it to your application (mine took just under two months, which is standard.)

But while that process is in motion, you can turn your attention to the other documents on the list.

Note that the official copies of your marriage certificate and criminal record will only be valid for six months after you get them, so these are best tackled later.

Know the costs

The application fee is €250, though other costs quickly add up.

There’s the language exam, the fees paid to government offices for releasing documents, stamp fees, international courier fees, and – the biggest cost for me – fees for sworn translations.

In my case, it all came to around €1,200. While this is a lot of money to me, I tried to keep in mind that citizenship applications can cost much, much more.

Many readers applying for Italian citizenship via ancestry, which is very often a lengthy and complex legal process, have told us of costs totalling between $10,000 and $15,000, and even up to $25,000 (most applicants we heard from were based in the US).

Meanwhile, the application fee alone for citizenship of my home country, the UK, is £1,630.

It’s all done online

The first thing to know is that the application process has now moved completely online.

There will still be plenty of analogue paper and pen-pushing to do when gathering documents. But the actual application itself must be filed electronically via the Italian interior ministry’s website, after which it will be handled by the prefettura in your province.

Applications for Italian citizenship by marriage must be filed electronically via the interior ministry’s website

Applications for Italian citizenship by marriage must be filed electronically via the interior ministry’s website. Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

You’ll need to use the ministry’s online portal here to put the application together by filling out all of the required information on the electronic form (little by little if necessary – you can save your progress and return to it later).

You’ll need to upload digital copies of all of the required documents. Since you’ll be given most of them in hard copy, having access to a scanner comes in very useful at this point.

Once that’s done, you’ll pay the application fee and 16-euro marca di bollo via the same portal, which takes you to the official PagoPA payment website, and then stores an electronic copy of the receipt for you automatically.

While some people might insist that you should pay these fees at the post office, bank, or tabaccheria, that’s no longer the case: the payment process has been online only since 2022.

The idea of completing a digital application using a website run by the Italian state didn’t exactly fill me with confidence, but I have to say it all worked very smoothly and I had no technical issues.

To log in to the portal you’ll need either a SPID digital identity or your Italian electronic ID card (CIE).

You can do it yourself – but you don’t have to

While I found filing the application fairly straightforward, there is professional help available if you want it.

In fact, staff at the prefettura handling my application said they were surprised that I’d filed it myself, as apparently most applicants use the services of a patronato, or occasionally, an immigration lawyer.

If you’re in doubt about any part of the process, these professionals can be invaluable in helping to gather the documents, uploading them in the correct formats, filling out the application for you in Italian, and generally making sure no mistakes are made.

I did look into using a patronato when I first embarked on the process, but all those I contacted were extremely busy. So you may also want to factor in some extra time to find one who is available.

Find out more about what a patronato does and how to find one near you in this guide.

Prepare for a long wait

Submitting your application will be a huge relief after months (or years) of working on it.

After that, all you can do is wait. The prefettura has up to three years to either approve or deny your application, or they may ask for further information. If approved, they’ll then want to see the hard copies of your documents.

The time limit for processing applications was increased in 2018 from two to four years and then changed again in 2020 to two years with a maximum extension of one additional year.

The 2018 law change also means that applications from spouses can now be denied – and are automatically denied if they are not processed within the maximum time frame (whereas before they were automatically granted.)

Every province may handle the process slightly differently. I know my local prefettura gets a relatively low number of applications – at least compared to Rome or Milan – so I had hoped it might be somewhat faster, but I’ve since found out that they take the maximum amount of time as standard.

At the time of writing, I’m still waiting and hoping that all the time, money, and pazienza involved in filing my application will eventually pay off.

Find out more about getting your Italian passport and what happens after your request for Italian citizenship is approved.

For more information about applying for Italian citizenship through marriage, see the Italian foreign ministry’s website or contact the Italian consulate in your country of origin.

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