Italy rules thousands with ancestral ties no longer qualify for citizenship: Here's what we know

Italy’s constitutional court has upheld a 2025 law that restricts citizenship by descent, cementing the changes into law that upended the century-old jus sanguinis (right of blood) principle on Thursday, March 12, 2026.

The verdict came in a statement from the court after judges ruled on a constitutional challenge filed last year by a court in Turin, northern Italy.

The statement reads, “The Constitutional Court has declared the questions of constitutional legitimacy raised by the Turin court partially unfounded and partially inadmissible.”

The law was introduced last March through an emergency decree that had been challenged by four judges, who questioned its constitutional position.

The detailed verdict on the matter is expected to be released within the coming weeks.

For context, since Italy became a country in 1861, there has been only one way of ascertaining who is an Italian citizen and who is not: look at their parents.

The very first page of the Italian civil code, which appeared in 1865, defined Italian citizenship such that a child born to an Italian citizen was an Italian citizen.

In the backdrop of this milestone judgment, the founding tenet of the Bel Paese appears to change, dashing long-held dreams of an Italian homecoming.

In other words, it would simply mean that Italians who settle abroad may forfeit their descendants’s right to citizenship.