Italian Citizenship Lawsuit Takes 19 Months with 98% Success Rate
A Raízes Italianas survey of 1,600 published rulings shows a median 19-month case duration, a 98% success rate, and decisions issued days after the hearing.
Updated September 1, 2026: this survey was redone on a base ten times larger — from 180 to 1,600 rulings — and the figures below replace those in the original version (28 months and 93%).
Anyone filing an Italian citizenship recognition lawsuit today waits a median of 19 months from filing to ruling — and wins in 98% of decided cases. That is what a Raízes Italianas survey of 1,600 published iure sanguinis rulings from a public Italian case-law repository shows.
What the numbers say
The sample covers 20 courts and is concentrated in recent decisions: over 60% date from 2026. Among rulings that allow timing the case (861), the median is 19 months — with wide gaps between courts: Ancona (7 months) and Campobasso (8) are the fastest, while Venice and Trieste (22) and Genoa (25) are the slowest.
Success rates are high nearly everywhere: 14 of the 15 ranked courts sit between 94% and 100%. Genoa is the relative exception (89%) — and the rulings themselves explain the recurring reason: rejections for insufficient documentary proof of the genealogical line.
The wait ends at the hearing
A little-known fact: measuring the gap between the final hearing and the ruling (819 cases with both dates), the median is 2 days. Nearly half of decisions are issued within a week, and 18% on the same day — many under art. 281 sexies of the Italian code of civil procedure, where the judge reads the decision in the hearing itself. In practice, the waiting happens before the hearing, not after it.
Where cases are lost: on appeal
The one outlier is the Rome Court of Appeal, with a 67% success rate and a 42-month median. The appeal — usually filed by the Interior Ministry — is the riskiest stage of the process, though it affects a minority of cases.
How it was done
The data comes from rulings published in a public repository, filtered to keep only citizenship-by-descent cases, deduplicated, with the operative part of each decision read individually. Since repositories disclose only the filing year, duration is an approximation. The full court-by-court breakdown is in the Court Observatory, updated daily.
