Two Dozen Countries Offering Citizenship by Descent to Americans
June 24, 2026
More than twenty countries let Americans claim citizenship through a parent, grandparent, or more distant ancestor. Here's the current landscape, including 2025 changes in Italy and Canada, and how to check where you stand.
Somewhere north of thirty million Americans could, in theory, hold a second passport right now without moving a single box or investing a single dollar. They just haven’t looked. Citizenship by descent, jus sanguinis in the legal shorthand, runs on a simple premise: if the right ancestor held the right citizenship at the right moment, that citizenship can pass down the family line to you, whether or not that ancestor ever imagined you’d want it.
The catch is that “the right ancestor at the right moment” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and the rules behind it are neither uniform nor static. More than twenty countries maintain some form of descent-based citizenship, and in the last two years alone, two of the biggest ones moved in opposite directions: Italy closed a door that had been open for decades, and Canada opened one that had been shut since 2009. A list like this one is a starting point for figuring out which lines are worth researching, not a verdict on your own family tree.
How citizenship by descent actually works
A few concepts show up across almost every country’s descent rules, even though the specifics differ sharply from one to the next.
Generational reach varies by country and can change overnight. Some countries limit descent claims to a parent or grandparent. Others allow the line to reach back further, sometimes considerably further, provided the paper trail holds up. A handful have no fixed generational cap at all. Crucially, these limits are set by ordinary legislation in most countries, not constitutional text, which means a government can tighten or loosen the rule with a single bill. Italy and Canada both did exactly that in 2025, in opposite directions.
The chain can’t be broken. Most descent regimes require an unbroken line of citizenship from the ancestor down to you. If an ancestor lost or renounced their citizenship (commonly by naturalizing elsewhere) before the next link in the chain was born, the claim can die at that point, even if a more distant ancestor once held citizenship. This single issue, an ancestor’s naturalization date relative to a child’s birth date, is the quiet detail that kills more descent claims than almost anything else.
Some claims are automatic; others require an application, registration, or a court filing. In a few countries, if you meet the criteria, you are already a citizen and simply need documentation to prove it. In others, you must actively apply, register within a deadline, or in rare cases litigate the point in court. Whether you need to speak the language, visit the country, or renounce anything else varies just as widely.
Documentation is the real bottleneck. Birth, marriage, and death certificates connecting you to the qualifying ancestor, in the right order, sometimes with certified translations, are what actually decide most cases. Family lore about “a grandmother from Naples” is a starting point, not proof.
What changed recently, and why it matters
Two 2025 reforms are worth understanding before you research any specific country, because they show how fast this landscape moves.
Italy narrowed its rules. For decades, Italy ran one of the most open descent regimes in the world, with no fixed generational cap. A 2025 reform (widely known as the Tajani law) tightened that considerably, generally limiting new claims to a parent or grandparent who held exclusively Italian citizenship, with narrow exceptions. Claims that would have worked easily a few years ago, particularly those reaching back to a great-grandparent, are largely no longer viable through the consular route. We cover the specifics in Italian Jure Sanguinis After the Tajani Law.
Canada opened its rules back up. Canada had operated under a “first-generation limit” since 2009 that cut off descent claims after one generation born outside the country. A 2025 law (Bill C-3) repealed that limit and restored citizenship, retroactively, to many people it had previously excluded. Canada is now, somewhat unusually for 2026, a pathway getting more accessible rather than less. Details are in Canadian Citizenship by Descent After Bill C-3.
The lesson generalizes: any specific generational limit you read for any country, including in the table below, is a snapshot, not a permanent rule. Treat it accordingly.
The list
The table below groups countries with real citizenship-by-descent provisions and describes their generational reach in general terms. This is deliberately not the level of detail you’d need to actually file, that depends on your exact ancestor, the date they held citizenship, and whether the chain was interrupted, which is what a proper eligibility check is for.
| Country | Region | General descent reach |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | Europe | Parent/grandparent in most new cases since a 2025 reform; older filings may follow prior, broader rules |
| Ireland | Europe | Reaches back multiple generations in many cases, often with a registration step |
| Poland | Europe | Parent/grandparent commonly cited; further back possible depending on family history |
| Hungary | Europe | Reaches back multiple generations in many cases; check current rules |
| Lithuania | Europe | Tied to ancestors who held citizenship before Soviet occupation; check current rules |
| Latvia | Europe | Tied to ancestors who held citizenship before 1940; check current rules |
| Germany | Europe | Parent/grandparent in many cases, plus a separate restoration route for descendants of those stripped of citizenship under the Nazi regime |
| Austria | Europe | Parent commonly cited, with a comparable restoration route for descendants of Nazi-era persecution |
| United Kingdom | Europe | Parent/grandparent in many cases, with registration options that vary by circumstance |
| Portugal | Europe | Reaches back multiple generations in many cases; check current rules |
| Spain | Europe | Parent commonly cited; separate historical routes exist and have shifted in recent years, check current status |
| Greece | Europe | Parent/grandparent commonly cited; further back possible depending on family history |
| Croatia | Europe | Parent/grandparent commonly cited; further back possible depending on family history |
| Czech Republic | Europe | Parent/grandparent commonly cited; check current rules |
| Slovakia | Europe | Parent/grandparent commonly cited; check current rules |
| Bulgaria | Europe | Parent/grandparent in many cases; check current rules |
| Romania | Europe | Reaches back multiple generations in many cases, tied to former Romanian territory in some family histories |
| Canada | North America | No fixed generation cap as of a 2025 reform, retroactive for people born before December 2025; a forward-looking residency-linked test applies to later generations |
| Philippines | Asia-Pacific | Reaches back multiple generations in many cases |
| Argentina | South America | Parent commonly cited; further back possible depending on family history |
| Colombia | South America | Parent commonly cited; check current rules |
| Ghana | Africa | Parent/grandparent commonly cited for descent-based claims; a separate diaspora program exists outside strict descent rules |
This is not an exhaustive list of every country with any descent provision, and it isn’t a ranking of which is “best.” A country near the bottom of most people’s mental list might be the strongest claim available to a specific family, depending entirely on where a specific ancestor was born and when.
How to actually find out if you qualify
- Start with what you know, not what you assume. Write down every ancestor’s country of birth, approximate birth year, and, if known, the year they naturalized elsewhere (if they did). That single naturalization date, relative to when the next generation was born, is often the deciding fact.
- Pull the documents before you pay anyone. Birth, marriage, and naturalization records from the ancestor’s home country and from US archives (state vital records offices, USCIS, and the National Archives) are the backbone of any descent case. Ordering them early costs little and saves months later.
- Check the current rule, not an old article. Because generational limits and program status can change in a single legislative session, as Italy and Canada both showed in 2025, verify any specific claim against the relevant consulate or government ministry before assuming an older blog post (including, candidly, older versions of this one) is still accurate.
- Run your specific ancestry against current rules across countries at once. If your family tree touches more than one country, which is common, checking each one individually against scattered, dated articles is slow and error-prone. A single structured pass through your actual family history against current rules is faster and more reliable.
Our free eligibility quiz does exactly that: it walks through your specific ancestry and checks it against current descent rules across more than a dozen countries at once, including the 2025 changes in Italy and Canada described above.
Take the Second Pass eligibility quiz
Informational only, not legal advice. Descent rules vary by country and change over time; the quiz reflects our current research, always verify with the relevant consulate before filing.