German citizenship in 2026: timelines, requirements and what the reform left behind

The three-year fast track is gone, multiple citizenship stayed - here is what that actually means for applicants.

What survived of the 2024 reform

On 27 June 2024 Germany's modernised nationality law came into force. It did three things at once: it cut the standard residence period from eight years to five, it allowed multiple citizenship with no special permit required, and it created a fast track after just three years for people with outstanding integration achievements - C1 German, employment, volunteering.

The three-year route lasted barely a year. The Bundestag voted to scrap it on 8 October 2025 and the amendment to the Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz (StAG) entered into force on 30 October 2025. In the current text of the law, section 10 paragraph 3, which granted the three-year claim, is marked weggefallen - repealed. Paragraph 3a went with it. So as of autumn 2026 there is no reduction of the standard period at all: not for an integration course, not for C1 German, not for merit.

What was left untouched is multiple citizenship. During coalition talks CDU/CSU pushed to abolish the dual passport and the SPD insisted on keeping it. The trade-off was straightforward: the fast track went, the right to keep your existing nationality stayed. Politicians from the conservative bloc keep raising the issue in 2026, but the law has not changed.

There is a mirror side to the same rule that gets far less coverage. Section 25 StAG, under which a German lost citizenship by voluntarily acquiring a foreign passport, was also repealed. Since 27 June 2024 the retention permit (Beibehaltungsgenehmigung) is no longer needed. This is not retroactive: anyone who already lost German citizenship under the old rules does not get it back automatically.

Filing before the repeal protects nobody

This is the painful part. The legislator wrote no transitional provisions. The Administrative Court of Trier, in its judgment of 3 December 2025 in case 8 K 5461/25.TR, rejected an applicant who had filed for three-year naturalisation before the amendment took effect. The court's reasoning: a naturalisation claim is assessed under the law in force at the time of the hearing, not at the time of filing, and legitimate expectations do not change that. The practical takeaway is blunt - if the authority did not physically issue the certificate before 30 October 2025, the applicant waits five years like everyone else.

Who can apply and when

• Five years of lawful habitual residence - the standard route under section 10 StAG. This is a legal entitlement, not a favour: if you meet every condition, the authority must naturalise you.
• Three years - spouses and registered partners of German citizens under section 9 StAG, provided the marriage or partnership has lasted at least two years. This rule survived the reform and was not touched in October 2025. All other conditions are the same as the standard route.
• Minor children are naturalised together with their parents, without the full language and citizenship test requirements.
• Birth in Germany - section 4 paragraph 3 StAG. A child of foreign parents acquires German citizenship at birth if at least one parent has already lived lawfully and habitually in Germany for five years and holds an unlimited right of residence. The reform cut this from eight years to five, and the old obligation to choose one nationality by age 21 was abolished earlier.

Restoration for victims of Nazi persecution

This is a separate and much softer route. Article 116 paragraph 2 of the Basic Law gives a right of restoration to those whose German citizenship was formally stripped between 1933 and 1945 on political, racial or religious grounds, and to their descendants. Since 20 August 2021 section 15 StAG closes the remaining gaps: it covers people who gave up or never acquired German citizenship in connection with persecution but fell outside Article 116 - for example those who renounced it on emigration, or who could not acquire it because of the discriminatory rules of the time.

No residence in Germany, no language exam, no citizenship test and no renunciation of your current passport are required here. Applications go to the Bundesverwaltungsamt or through German consulates abroad. The difficulty is archival: you must document the chain from the persecuted ancestor down to yourself. Processing of these cases has historically been measured in years.

Ireland still offers the same timeline without a language exam: Irish citizenship comes after 5 years of residence out of the last 9.

The four requirement blocks that are always checked

German at B1 level

Proved by a B1 certificate on the Common European Framework scale, by the Deutsch-Test für Zuwanderer, or by a German school or university qualification. There is an exception for the guest worker generation: those who entered West Germany before 30 June 1974, and contract workers who came to the GDR before 1990, only need to manage everyday spoken German, with no written exam.

The citizenship test

The Einbürgerungstest is 33 questions drawn from a catalogue of more than 300, and you need at least 17 correct answers. It costs about $30 per attempt and can be retaken without limit. Since late March 2024 the catalogue includes ten new questions on three topics: Jewish life in Germany, Israel's right to exist, and antisemitism. The same guest worker categories are exempt, as are holders of a German school leaving certificate. Formally the test is voluntary, but in practice the alternative ways of proving knowledge of German society are rarely used.

Supporting yourself without benefits

You must support yourself and your dependants without Bürgergeld and without social assistance. Employment income, pensions, parental and child allowances, housing benefit and maintenance payments all count. This is the point the 2024 reform actually tightened: previously you could argue that benefit receipt was outside your control, whereas now the general rule is simply no SGB II or SGB XII benefits.

The exceptions are listed in the statute and there are few of them: guest workers and their spouses where benefit receipt is not their fault; anyone who has worked full time for at least 20 of the last 24 months; and spouses of such workers who live with a minor child in the same household. Everyone else has to reach self-sufficiency and hold it.

Criminal record and the mandatory declaration

Section 12a StAG sets out what is disregarded: educational measures under juvenile criminal law, fines of up to 90 daily rates, and suspended prison sentences of up to three months once the probation period has ended and the sentence has been remitted. Multiple convictions are added together. And there is one hard limit: if the judgment established an antisemitic, racist or otherwise inhumane motive, none of these allowances apply at all, regardless of the size of the sentence.

On top of that, since 2024 applicants must sign a declaration committing to the free democratic order, to Germany's particular historical responsibility for the National Socialist regime and the protection of Jewish life, and to equality between men and women. Polygamy and acts contrary to human dignity rule out naturalisation.

Which residence permit qualifies and which does not

This trap tends to be discovered late. At the moment the decision is taken you need either an unlimited title (Niederlassungserlaubnis, EU long-term residence), or an EU Blue Card, or a temporary permit whose purpose is not on the exclusion list in section 10 paragraph 1 number 2 StAG.

That exclusion list covers, among others, study permits under section 16b, job-seeker titles, permits under section 24 of the Residence Act (temporary protection - the status most Ukrainian refugees hold) and section 25 paragraphs 3 to 5. A Duldung and a permission to stay pending an asylum decision are not residence titles at all. Recognised refugee status under section 25 paragraphs 1 and 2 is not on the exclusion list, so recognised refugees can naturalise.

A note for students: the study permit itself does not qualify at the decision stage, but time spent studying in Germany can count towards the five years under section 12b StAG. The standard sequence is study, then a switch to a work title or the work visa and Blue Card route, and only then the citizenship application. We covered the mechanics of the work routes in detail in our piece on German residence permits for skilled professionals.

Money and waiting times

The fees are identical nationwide. The side costs, and above all the waiting time, are not.

The 2025 statistics look like this: 467,400 applications filed, 371,100 procedures completed, 332,500 people naturalised - the first time since records began in 2000 that the figure passed 300,000 in a single year. Of the completed procedures, 90 percent ended in naturalisation, 3 percent in rejection and 5 percent in withdrawal. The largest groups were Syrian (65,600), Turkish (34,100) and Russian (19,700) nationals. Average residence before naturalisation was 12.4 years, well above the legal minimum, which shows how late people actually get around to applying.

There is no unified federal statistic on processing times, which is telling in itself. The spread between authorities is enormous: small district offices can close a file in a few months, large cities stretch to years. Berlin centralised naturalisation in the Landesamt für Einwanderung on 1 January 2024 and inherited around 40,000 open cases from the districts in one go; it also runs a fully digital application. Munich and several Saxon authorities are consistently among the slowest. With almost a hundred thousand more applications filed than procedures closed in 2025, the national queue is growing rather than shrinking.

Who this is wrong for, and what can go wrong

• Anyone looking for citizenship by investment. Germany has no such route and none is planned. Money buys better legal support, not a shorter five years.
• Anyone unwilling to actually move. The law requires gewöhnlicher Aufenthalt - your real centre of life in the country. Long absences break the residence chain, and a trip longer than six months generally terminates the residence permit itself. Remote naturalisation does not exist.
• Anyone who drew Bürgergeld during part of the five-year period and does not fall within the narrow statutory exceptions. This is the most common reason families get refused.
• Holders of excluded permit types. Ukrainians on section 24 protection cannot naturalise on that basis and must first move to a work or other qualifying title, and time on the previous status is not always credited.
• Anyone whose home country bans dual nationality. Germany no longer demands renunciation, but the law of your country of origin may terminate your original citizenship automatically. Check both sides.
• Anyone under an obligation to report a second passport at home. Several countries, Russia among them, have their own notification rules with fixed deadlines and penalties for silence. That question is answered by the law of your first citizenship, not by Germany.

The main systemic risk is political. The three-year episode showed how quickly a rule can appear and vanish, and that courts do not protect people who filed but had not yet received a decision. Plan around the rules that are actually in force, not around promises, and do not sit on an application once the five years are complete.

Finally, the tax side. Germany does not tax on the basis of citizenship, so the passport itself creates no tax obligations - tax residence does. But you will have spent at least five years as a fully taxable resident before you get there, and a later departure with substantial shareholdings triggers exit taxation. Rates and rules are covered separately in our guide to taxes in Germany, and the full country overview sits on the Germany page.

A realistic five-year path

Stripped of optimism, the sequence runs like this. Year one: arrival on a work permit or Blue Card, registration, settling employment, and German from scratch or from A2 up towards B1. Years two and three: stable full-time work with no gaps into benefits, sitting the B1 exam and the citizenship test early, and gathering home-country documents before they expire. Year four: obtaining a permanent title if your route grants one before the five-year mark, and checking that every period of residence is unbroken. Year five: filing the moment the clock runs out, knowing the decision itself may take another six months to two years depending on the city.

German citizenship remains one of the most accessible in Europe on paper and one of the slowest to administer in practice. Five years of law plus one and a half to two years of queue is the honest arithmetic for someone starting from zero in 2026.

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