How to Get Italian Citizenship by Marriage: ALI Portal, Oath, Timeline

You can obtain Italian citizenship by marriage after two years of legal residence in Italy following your wedding, or three years if you live abroad, by applying through the Italian Ministry of Interior’s online ALI portal. The waiting periods are cut in half if you and your Italian spouse have minor children, biological or adopted. You’ll need to prove B1-level Italian, clear criminal background checks, and eventually take an oath of allegiance to the Italian Republic.

When You Can Apply

Italian Law 91/1992 sets the clock. Two years of legal residence in Italy after the marriage date, or three years from the marriage date if you live outside Italy.¹ With a minor child in the picture, that becomes one year in Italy or eighteen months abroad.²

The marriage has to remain intact all the way through. No separation, divorce, or annulment can have taken effect by the day you take your oath. If you married outside Italy, the marriage must first be registered at your Italian spouse’s comune (municipality). If your Italian spouse lives abroad, they should be registered with AIRE (the Registry of Italians Resident Abroad) at their local consulate, since AIRE records are how the consulate verifies both the marriage and your spouse’s citizenship.³

Same-sex partners in a civil union registered under Italy’s Law 76/2016 follow the same path, with identical waiting periods, documents, and procedure.⁴ A civil union performed abroad must be registered in Italy the same way a foreign marriage would be.

If your Italian spouse dies after you’ve already met the legal requirements and filed, Italy’s Constitutional Court has held that your claim remains valid; the rights built through the marital relationship survive the marriage itself.

Proving Your Italian

You need a certificate showing at least B1 proficiency, issued by one of four government-recognized bodies: CILS (Università per Stranieri di Siena), CELI (Università per Stranieri di Perugia), IT (Università Roma Tre), or PLIDA (Società Dante Alighieri). Anything from another provider will not be accepted.

You’re exempt from the language certificate if you fall into one of these categories:

You hold a degree or diploma from a public or private institution officially recognized by the Italian Ministry of Education or Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
You signed the integration agreement under Italian immigration law, even if you later moved abroad.
You hold an EU long-term residence permit issued in Italy. Permits from other EU countries don’t count.
You have a documented disability or serious health condition that severely limits language learning, certified by a public healthcare facility.³

Criminal Record Grounds for Refusal

Article 6 of Law 91/1992 bars citizenship where certain convictions exist. The disqualifying categories are convictions for crimes against the Italian state (its personality and public order), any Italian conviction for an intentional crime carrying a maximum statutory sentence of three or more years, and foreign convictions for non-political offenses that resulted in more than one year of imprisonment where the sentence has been recognized in Italy. Substantiated reasons relating to the security of the Italian Republic are also grounds for refusal.¹

If criminal proceedings are pending against you for a qualifying offense, your application is suspended until there’s a final judgment. Rehabilitation under Italian law eliminates the disqualifying effect of a prior conviction, so an old record is not necessarily a permanent bar.

Documents You’ll Need

The paperwork is the most common place applications stall. Each consulate publishes its own checklist with small variations, so confirm requirements with the consulate or prefecture that will handle your file. The core documents are:

A certified long-form birth certificate, legalized with an Apostille from the issuing country and translated into Italian.
A marriage certificate. If the marriage is already registered at your Italian spouse’s comune, a transcript from that municipality is enough. Otherwise you need the original certificate with Apostille and Italian translation.
Criminal background checks from every country you have lived in. For U.S. residents that means a federal-level FBI Identity History Summary, plus state-level checks from your state of birth and state of residence. Each must be apostilled and translated into Italian.⁵
Your B1 language certificate, or documentation supporting an exemption.
A photocopy of your current passport.
A copy of your Italian spouse’s identification document.

Criminal background checks are only valid for six months from issuance. If you don’t submit within that window, you’ll need fresh ones. Birth certificates usually have a longer shelf life, but consulates vary, so confirm before you order documents.

Filing Through the ALI Portal

All citizenship-by-marriage applications go through the ALI portal run by the Ministry of Interior.⁶ From Italy, you log in with SPID (Public Digital Identity System) or an electronic identity card. From abroad, you register with your email and set up two-factor authentication through an app such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator, a one-time setup.³

You complete the form in the portal and upload scans of every supporting document. The application fee is €250, set by Article 14 of Italian Decree No. 113/2018.⁴ After the online submission is accepted, your consulate (abroad) or prefecture (in Italy) will usually schedule an in-person appointment to verify original documents.

How Long It Takes

The government has up to 24 months to decide, extendable to 36 months. Real-world waits often run longer. You can check status by logging into the ALI portal, which shows updates as the file moves through review.⁷

During review, the authorities may ask for additional documents or clarifications. Respond quickly. Slow responses are one of the few parts of this process you actually control.

If your application blows past the statutory deadline without a decision, you have options. A formal notice (a diffida) sent to the responsible authority requests a decision, typically giving them 30 days to act. If that doesn’t move things, you can escalate to the TAR, the Regional Administrative Court. Both steps are worth discussing with an Italian immigration attorney if your case is significantly overdue.

The Oath and When Citizenship Starts

Once the Ministry of Interior issues a positive decree, you take an oath of allegiance to the Italian Republic. This step has a hard deadline: six months from the date you’re notified of the decree. Miss it and the decree becomes void, and you lose citizenship under that application. Both spouses typically attend, and you’ll sign a declaration confirming the marriage is still intact.⁴

Your citizenship takes effect the day of the oath, not the day the decree was issued. Until you swear in, the marriage must still be intact. A separation or divorce between the decree and the oath can undo the whole application at the finish line.

If You’re Denied

Denial arrives as a written rejection notice. You have 60 days from the date of the formal rejection decree to appeal to the TAR. The court reviews whether the Ministry’s decision was legally justified, and it can suspend the rejection while the case is heard. An Italian attorney who works in citizenship law is practically essential at this stage, because the proceedings run under Italian administrative law.

Keeping Your Current Citizenship

Italy has permitted dual citizenship since 1992, and becoming Italian through marriage does not require you to renounce your existing nationality. Your home country’s rules are the other half of the question. Some countries do require renunciation when you voluntarily acquire another citizenship, so check your own country’s law before assuming you can hold both passports. Italy itself sets no cap on the number of citizenships you hold.

1
Parliament of Italy. Act No. 91 of 5 February 1992 – Citizenship Law of Italy
2
Consolato Generale d’Italia a Filadelfia. Citizenship by Marriage
3
Consolato Generale d’Italia a New York. Italian Citizenship by Marriage or Civil Union
4
Consolato Generale d’Italia Boston. Jure Matrimonii – Citizenship by Marriage
5
Consulate General of Italy in Los Angeles. Citizenship by Marriage
6
Ministero degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale. Becoming an Italian Citizen
7
Ministero dell’Interno. Citizenship Office Information