Hungary

Hungarian citizenship passes by descent (ius sanguinis) without generational limit. Under Article G(1) of the Fundamental Law and Section 3 of Act LV of 1993 on Hungarian Citizenship, the child of a Hungarian citizen is a Hungarian citizen by birth, wherever born. A person whose parent, grandparent or earlier ancestor held Hungarian citizenship at the time of the next generation's birth is therefore already a Hungarian citizen and does not "apply for" citizenship at all: he/she asks the authorities to confirm it in a verification-of-citizenship procedure (állampolgárság igazolása, Sections 10–11 of the Act).

Whether that route is open turns entirely on whether the ancestor still held Hungarian citizenship when the next child in the line was born, and several historical rules cut across emigrant families. The most important for lines that left for the Americas, Australia or Western Europe is Act XIII of 1939, in force from 1 September 1939, which terminated the Hungarian citizenship of anyone who acquired a foreign citizenship by naturalisation. It applied retroactively to naturalisations completed before that date, the loss then taking effect on 1 September 1939, and it extended to the wife and children where the foreign naturalisation covered them. The ground disappeared only when Act LX of 1948 entered into force on 1 February 1949. The ministerial memorandum to that Act records that the overwhelming majority of emigrants had lost Hungarian citizenship not by release or by absence but by foreign naturalisation, so an ancestor who took out foreign papers at any point before 1 February 1949 is the single most common reason a chain fails. Ten-year absence, Trianon territorial loss and the pre-1957 rules on women and legitimated children break further lines.

Where the ancestor did lose Hungarian citizenship, descendants may instead use simplified (preferential) naturalisation under Section 4(3) of the Act, available for applications begun on or after 1 January 2011. The applicant must show that an ancestor (felmenő) was a Hungarian citizen or make Hungarian origin probable, must prove ability to communicate in Hungarian, must have a clean criminal record with no pending Hungarian criminal proceedings, and must not endanger Hungary's public security or national security. No residence in Hungary, no livelihood proof and no constitutional-knowledge examination are required on this route. Three further routes complete the picture. A person whose own Hungarian citizenship ended may be re-naturalised under Section 5 on the conditions of Section 4(1)(b) and (d) — clean record and no security risk — together with proof of Hungarian language ability; no ancestral element is required, because the applicant's own former citizenship replaces it. Persons who lost citizenship through specified measures of 1946–1990, and persons born before 1 October 1957 to a Hungarian mother and a foreign father, may reacquire or acquire citizenship by declaration under Section 5/A, with no language requirement. Spouses of Hungarian citizens have their own preferential route under Section 4(3a): ten years of valid marriage, or five years with a common child, plus the same clean-record and security conditions and proof of Hungarian language ability.

For verification of citizenship there is no limit on how far back the anchor ancestor may be, but the chain of transmission must be unbroken: each generation must have held Hungarian citizenship at the moment the next generation was born, under the law in force at that time. Claims through a Hungarian-born parent or grandparent are routine at consulates; longer chains are possible in principle, though the further back the emigration, the greater the risk that a historical loss ground broke the line. The grounds to test at each step are acquisition of a foreign citizenship by naturalisation between 1 September 1939 and 31 January 1949 (reaching back to earlier naturalisations), ten-year absence abroad, a woman's marriage to a foreigner before 1 October 1957, legitimation by a foreign father, Trianon territorial loss, and deprivation. The authority examines the ancestor's citizenship under the rules applicable at each date, because Section 1(4) of Act LV of 1993 gives the citizenship laws no retroactive effect.

For simplified naturalisation under Section 4(3), the anchor ancestor may likewise be a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent or an earlier forebear – the statute says only "ascendant" – and, crucially, the ancestor's later loss of citizenship does not defeat the claim. An unbroken chain of citizenship is not required; what must be unbroken is the documented line of descent. The Budapest Government Office expressly requires certificates for every intermediate generation (it is not sufficient to produce, say, a great-grandfather's birth certificate without documents linking father and grandfather), and on maternal lines the marriage certificates needed to track name changes.

In practice the two routes divide along one question: did the ancestor still hold Hungarian citizenship when the next child in the line was born? If yes at every step, verification confirms an existing citizenship with no language requirement. If the chain broke, simplified naturalisation is available instead – but then the applicant must speak Hungarian.

The first codified citizenship statute was Act L of 1879 on the acquisition and loss of Hungarian state citizenship, in force from 8 January 1880. It provided acquisition by descent, legitimation, marriage and naturalisation. Until 30 September 1957 descent operated asymmetrically: a child born in wedlock followed the father's citizenship only, so the child of a Hungarian mother and a foreign father did not become Hungarian; a child born out of wedlock followed the Hungarian mother, but lost Hungarian citizenship if legitimated by a foreign father and thereby actually acquired the father's citizenship, and not even then if the child went on living in Hungary (Section 33 of Act L of 1879). From 1 February 1949 acknowledgment of paternity and judicial establishment of paternity had the same effect, again only where the father's citizenship was acquired. A foreign woman automatically became Hungarian by marrying a Hungarian man; a Hungarian woman lost her citizenship by marrying a foreigner, and from 1 February 1949 only if she actually acquired her husband's citizenship through the marriage — a more favourable rule that Section 12 of Act LX of 1948 extended to marriages concluded before that date, which can preserve a line that the older rule would have broken. Act V of 1957, in force from 1 October 1957, introduced full gender equality: from that date children acquire citizenship from either parent and marriage no longer affects citizenship.

State succession is central to Hungarian cases. Under the Treaty of Trianon, promulgated by Act XXXIII of 1921 and in force from 26 July 1921, persons whose communal domicile (illetőség) lay in territory ceded to Czechoslovakia, Romania, Austria, the Serb-Croat-Slovene Kingdom, Poland or Italy lost Hungarian citizenship automatically and acquired the successor state's citizenship. Two distinct options followed. Under Article 63 a person over 18 could, within one year, opt for the nationality of the state where he had held illetőség before acquiring it in the transferred territory, and had then to move there within a further twelve months. Under Article 64 persons differing in race and language from the local majority could opt within six months for Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, the Serb-Croat-Slovene State or Czechoslovakia; this was the provision most ethnic Hungarians in ceded territory actually used. Residents of the territories re-annexed between 1938 and 1941 who had lost citizenship through Trianon regained it by operation of law, then lost it again with effect from 20 January 1945. Sections 25 to 27 of Act LX of 1948 later restored Hungarian citizenship to several of these groups, including those who lost it through the reversal of the 1938–1941 annexations if they were permanently resident in Hungary on both 1 January 1948 and 1 February 1949, so a line that looks broken by territorial change should be tested against those provisions before it is abandoned.

The succession of citizenship acts – Act L of 1879, as amended by Act XIII of 1939 (in force 1 September 1939, repealed with effect from 1 February 1949 by Section 36(2) of Act LX of 1948), then Act LX of 1948 (in force 1 February 1949), Act V of 1957 (in force 1 October 1957) and Act LV of 1993 (in force 1 October 1993) – determines an ancestor's status at any given date. Act LV of 1993 remains in force; the text stated here is the consolidated text in force on 22 August 2026. It confirms descent from either parent, permits multiple citizenship, and has been amended for present purposes by Act XLIV of 2010 (simplified naturalisation, applicable to procedures begun from 1 January 2011), Act CCVII of 2012 (the spousal route in Section 4(3a), in force 1 March 2013), Act XCVII of 2019 (identity card issued ex officio on naturalisation, in force 1 February 2020) and Act LXIV of 2025 (suspension regime, in force 30 June 2025).

Two automatic grounds dominate emigrant files. The first is acquisition of a foreign citizenship by naturalisation, introduced by Section 1 of Act XIII of 1939 with effect from 1 September 1939 and abolished on 1 February 1949. It reached naturalisations completed before 1 September 1939, the loss then taking effect on that date, and extended to the wife and children where the foreign naturalisation covered them. Deprivation decisions taken under the 1939 Act were retroactively annulled by a resolution of the Presidential Council in 1956, but loss under Section 1 operated automatically rather than by deprivation decision, and on the narrower reading of that resolution it is unaffected; the point is contested in the literature and official guidance on historical loss grounds does not settle it, so a line broken by an ancestor's foreign naturalisation before 1 February 1949 should be treated as at risk.

The second is the ten-year absence rule of Act L of 1879: a Hungarian who left without a government commission and stayed abroad for ten uninterrupted years lost citizenship. Until 31 August 1939 the period ran from departure or, for passport holders, from the passport's expiry, and was interrupted — with the clock restarting — by any return to Hungary, renewal of a Hungarian passport, registration at an Austro-Hungarian (later Hungarian) consulate, or notice to the competent authority of the intention to retain citizenship; because Section 48 of the 1879 Act ran the period from its own entry into force for those who had already left, no citizenship was lost by absence before 8 January 1890. From 1 September 1939 Act XIII of 1939 tightened the rule: the ten years ran from departure in all cases, returns of up to three months no longer interrupted it, and retention required a declaration plus the Interior Minister's express or tacit consent. Act LX of 1948 abolished absence as a loss ground on 1 February 1949. Administrative practice has long treated the period from 1 September 1939 to 15 September 1947 as not counting towards the ten years, and consular practice accordingly treats the rule as a live risk principally for those who left before 1 September 1929 or whose last Hungarian passport expired before that date — a working rule of thumb rather than an arithmetic boundary, since the clock could in principle run again between 15 September 1947 and 1 February 1949. A husband's loss by absence extended to his wife living with him and to minor children under his paternal authority.

Other historical grounds that break a chain:

• A woman's marriage to a foreigner before 1 October 1957 — automatic until 31 January 1949, thereafter only where she acquired the husband's citizenship.
• Legitimation of a child by a foreign father, and from 1 February 1949 acknowledgment or judicial establishment of paternity, where the father's citizenship was thereby acquired.
• Release from citizenship on request (elbocsátás), available under all three earlier acts until replaced by renunciation on 1 October 1993.
• Loss declared by the authorities under Sections 20 and 30 of Act L of 1879 against a person who entered another state's service without permission and failed to leave it on demand.
• Deprivation (megfosztás) under Act XIII of 1939, Act X of 1947, Act XXVI of 1948, Act LX of 1948 and Act V of 1957, used extensively against wartime exiles and post-1945 émigrés.
• Annulment by the Interior Minister, under Section 3 of Act IV of 1939, of naturalisations and re-naturalisations granted to Jews after 1 July 1914, extending to the wife and dependent children.
• Loss under Decrees 7970/1946 ME, 10.515/1947 and 12.200/1947 affecting ethnic Germans obliged to resettle in Germany between 1946 and 1948, who lost citizenship on the day they left Hungary, and loss on resettlement under the Czechoslovak–Hungarian population exchange.
• The bilateral treaties concluded with socialist states to eliminate dual citizenship, which must be checked for children of mixed marriages born while a treaty was in force; the Hungarian–Polish convention, for example, applied from 3 February 1962 to 22 January 1994.

Today citizenship is lost only by renunciation or, narrowly, withdrawal. Under Section 8 a Hungarian citizen living abroad who holds or is assured of a foreign citizenship may renounce by declaration to the President of the Republic; a person who did not in fact obtain the foreign citizenship may ask for restoration within three years. Under Section 9 citizenship may be withdrawn only where it was acquired in breach of the law – notably by deceiving the authority with false data – and not after twenty years from acquisition; citizenship by birth cannot be withdrawn. Naturalising elsewhere or living abroad does not cause loss. Since 30 June 2025 (Act LXIV of 2025, following the Fifteenth Amendment to the Fundamental Law adopted on 14 April 2025) Sections 9/A–9/E additionally allow the temporary suspension, for up to ten years, of the citizenship of dual nationals whose other citizenship is of a non-EEA state and who hold no EEA or EU candidate-country citizenship, on public-order, public-security or national-security grounds. The measure is decided by a minister designated by the Government and is reviewable by the Curia, which may annul the decision on legality grounds but may not substitute its own; no case had been publicly reported as at 1 November 2025, and the position should be checked at the time of advice.

Section 5/A provides a declaration route – a unilateral written declaration addressed to the President of the Republic, with no language test and no discretionary refusal where the conditions are met – for the principal victims of the 1946–1990 period. It covers persons deprived of citizenship under Act X of 1947, Act XXVI of 1948, Act LX of 1948 or Act V of 1957; persons who lost citizenship under the 1946–1947 decrees on the resettlement of ethnic Germans; and persons whose citizenship ended by release (elbocsátás) between 15 September 1947 and 2 May 1990. Deprivations imposed under Act XIII of 1939 between 1941 and 1944 are not on that list, so those affected must use re-naturalisation under Section 5, which carries the Hungarian language requirement. Section 5/A also lets a person born before 1 October 1957 to a Hungarian mother and a foreign father, who did not become Hungarian at birth under the then-applicable paternal rule, acquire citizenship by declaration, with no age or residence condition. Acquisition takes effect on the day of the declaration, not retroactively, so descendants born before that day derive no citizenship from it – they are directed to simplified naturalisation, which requires Hungarian language ability. The authority must issue the certificate or a refusal decision within sixty days.

There is no registration deadline for children born abroad to Hungarian citizens: citizenship arises automatically at birth and can be confirmed at any age; only the registration of the birth in the Hungarian civil registry is needed before documents issue. Two narrower declaration rights exist for persons born in Hungary who did not acquire their parents' foreign citizenship at birth, and for stateless persons born in Hungary (Section 5/A(1)(b) and (d)); both require at least five years' continuous residence in Hungary immediately before the declaration, the first additionally requires that the parents had a Hungarian residence on the day of the birth, and both must be exercised before the nineteenth birthday under Section 5/A(1a). Applicants in the naturalisation procedure may at the same time request a name modification under Section 20/A – for example resumption of an ancestor's original Hungarian family name or the Hungarian form of a given name – effective on the day of the oath.

Hungarian law imposes no renunciation requirement on any route. Section 2(2) of Act LV of 1993 treats a Hungarian citizen who also holds another citizenship as a Hungarian citizen for the purposes of Hungarian law, unless an Act provides otherwise, and official consular guidance states expressly that applicants for simplified naturalisation and verification are not required to renounce their existing nationality. Applicants are routinely warned only that their other country of citizenship may itself restrict dual citizenship. The Cold-War-era bilateral conventions with socialist states that eliminated dual citizenship have all lapsed.

The one qualification, in force since 30 June 2025, is the suspension regime described above, which relies on precisely that "unless an Act provides otherwise" clause: it targets dual citizens whose other citizenship is of a state outside the EEA where the person holds no EEA or EU candidate-country citizenship, applies only on serious public-order or security grounds, is time-limited, and does not affect the acquisition of citizenship by descent.

Verification of citizenship requires a documented chain of civil-status records from the Hungarian ancestor to the applicant: the applicant's long-form birth certificate and the parents' marriage certificate, then – where neither parent's citizenship is already established – the Hungarian grandparent's birth certificate, the grandparents' marriage certificate, and the intervening generation's records. Only detailed ("long-form") certificates are accepted. Hungarian birth and marriage certificates prove the events but not citizenship; for ancestors who left before 1945 the authorities ask for documents evidencing retained citizenship, such as old Hungarian passports, identity booklets, certificates of communal domicile (illetőségi bizonyítvány), earlier citizenship certificates, school records, employment books (munkakönyv), military booklets (katonakönyv) or name-change certificates. For emigrants who left before 1 February 1949, a Hungarian document showing residence in Hungary after 1 September 1929 is requested; for pre-1929 emigrants, proof that the ten-year absence was interrupted. Missing Hungarian certificates are retrieved from Hungarian registries and archives by the authority itself; Hungarian state registers exist from 1 October 1895, and church records are accepted for earlier events. Because all life events of a Hungarian citizen must appear in the Hungarian registry, foreign births, marriages, divorces and deaths in the line are registered in Hungary alongside the citizenship application.

Foreign public documents must, as a rule, bear diplomatic legalisation or – for states party to the Hague Convention – an apostille, unless an international treaty, a directly applicable act of the European Union (in practice Regulation (EU) 2016/1191) or established reciprocity dispenses with it (Section 14(5)). Documents not in Hungarian require a certified Hungarian translation (by OFFI in Hungary or a Hungarian consul abroad); by statute, civil-status documents of the kinds specified by government decree need no translation in the citizenship procedure if issued in English, German or French, and consuls may accept extract translations of other documents (Section 14(5a)–(5b)). Simplified-naturalisation files additionally contain the standard application form completed in Hungarian, a handwritten curriculum vitae for adults, the applicant's own civil-status documents, the ancestor-chain documents described above (church and archival extracts with precise source references are accepted for the ancestor's citizenship), data sheets for the domestic registration of the applicant's foreign birth and marriage, and photograph, signature and fingerprint samples for the identity card issued ex officio.

All citizenship applications – verification requests, naturalisation and re-naturalisation applications, declarations and renunciations – are filed in person; an authorised representative may not file, though the statutory representative of a minor or of a person lacking capacity files on their behalf (Sections 13 and 15). Filing points are the district (kerületi/járási) offices of the government offices, the integrated customer-service offices ("government windows"), Hungarian consular officers abroad, and the citizenship authority itself. The competent authority for citizenship matters is the Government Office of the Capital City Budapest (Budapest Főváros Kormányhivatala), Citizenship and Registry Department; decisions on naturalisation and re-naturalisation are made by the President of the Republic on the proposal of the responsible minister (Section 6(1)), while verification and declarations are handled by the government office. Consulates forward files to Budapest by diplomatic post and require an appointment booked with the mission.

In the verification procedure the authority examines the ancestor's and applicant's status under the historically applicable law. A successful applicant is entered in the Hungarian registry of personal data and addresses, which itself proves citizenship to all Hungarian authorities; a citizenship certificate (állampolgársági bizonyítvány), valid for three years, is issued on request (Sections 10–11). The confirmed citizen may then obtain a Hungarian passport and identity card. No oath, language test or examination applies on this route.

In simplified naturalisation the receiving officer checks Hungarian language ability in conversation at filing – no formal language examination or certificate is required or accepted as a substitute, and the authority may re-test at any stage. The constitutional-basics examination required of ordinary naturalisation applicants does not apply. After a positive decision the President signs the certificate of naturalisation; the applicant is then summoned to take the citizenship oath or pledge, at his/her choice before any Hungarian mayor or the head of a Hungarian diplomatic mission (Section 7(1)(c)). Citizenship is acquired on the day of the oath (Section 7(2)); if, through the applicant's own fault, the oath is not taken within one year of service of the summons, the naturalisation decision lapses (Section 16(10)). Since 1 February 2020 a Hungarian identity card is produced ex officio and handed over at the oath ceremony, and the applicant's foreign birth and marriage are registered in the Hungarian registry as part of the procedure. Declarations under Section 5/A follow the same filing channels; the authority certifies the acquisition in writing, and refusals are reviewable by the Budapest-Capital Regional Court.

Statutory clocks are moderate but stop for evidence-gathering, so real durations exceed them. For verification and citizenship certificates the authority has sixty days, extendable by sixty (Sections 17(3) and 17(4)), but time spent completing files and querying registries and archives does not count; Hungarian consulates in the United States state that verification takes eight to twelve months on average in practice. For naturalisation the minister must put the case to the President within three months, extendable by a further three months (Sections 17(2) and 17(4)), after which the oath is scheduled some weeks later. Declarations under Section 5/A must be decided within sixty days, extendable by sixty.

No state duty (illeték) is payable on any citizenship procedure. Simplified naturalisation, re-naturalisation, the Section 5/A declaration and renunciation carry no consular fee either, and the associated domestic registration of foreign births, marriages, divorces and deaths and the acknowledgement of paternity are free of charge at consulates. Verification of citizenship is free when filed in Hungary, but a verification or citizenship-certificate application made through a consulate attracts the consular participation fee set by Decree 5/2010 (XII. 31.) KüM. That decree fixes its charges in euro and sets three regional bands; authorised posts may accept payment in local currency. On the tariff in force from 1 August 2026 the figures relevant to a descent applicant are:

• Posts in Hungary's neighbours (Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia): citizenship certificate or verification EUR 20; adult ten-year passport EUR 68; passport under 12 EUR 44; passport 12–18 EUR 55; ministerial legalisation of a Hungarian document, such as an apostille, EUR 40.
• Posts in other European countries: citizenship certificate or verification EUR 40; adult ten-year passport EUR 88; passport under 12 EUR 64; passport 12–18 EUR 75; ministerial legalisation of a Hungarian document EUR 60.
• Posts outside Europe (including the United States, Canada, Australia, Israel, Brazil and Argentina): citizenship certificate or verification EUR 45; adult ten-year passport EUR 93; passport under 12 EUR 69; passport 12–18 EUR 80; ministerial legalisation of a Hungarian document EUR 65. United States posts publish the same tariff in dollars: on the New York list of 1 August 2026, verification of Hungarian citizenship costs USD 52 and an adult passport USD 107.

Four charges are the same in all three bands: obtaining a Hungarian civil-status certificate from Hungary EUR 25, a consular certified translation into Hungarian EUR 35 per page, diplomatic legalisation of a foreign document EUR 25, and issue of an identity card by a consulate in cases other than replacement EUR 22. The identity card produced ex officio in the naturalisation procedure is free, as is the like-for-like replacement of an expired card at a consulate and any card for an applicant under 14 or over 70. Passports applied for inside Hungary are charged in forints: 17,000 HUF (roughly EUR 43) for the ordinary ten-year adult document, 8,500 and 12,500 HUF for minors. Foreign apostille, foreign-record and courier costs are private expenses outside the official tariffs and are not included here.

This page is not updated regularly, and it may not reflect the current position. It is a general account of Hungarian citizenship law: statutes are amended, time limits expire, and the practice of the competent authorities moves without the legislation moving with it. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here is an assessment of your own family’s position.

Whether there is a claim in your case turns on names, dates and documents that no general page can take into account. The questionnaire is where we ask about them, and a lawyer in our citizenship team reads the answers.