Route three of three
Citizenship by birth
If the chain of Slovak citizenship in your family was never broken, it passed to you at birth — and you are already a Slovak citizen, even if your birth was never registered in Slovakia and you have never held a Slovak document. In that case there is nothing to apply for: the task is registration, and it is the fastest route to a Slovak passport there is.
How it works
Citizenship passes at birth, by law
Slovak citizenship passes from parent to child at birth, by law. If your parent was a citizen at the moment you were born, citizenship passed to you automatically — regardless of where in the world you were born. What remains is administrative: your birth is entered in the Special Registry in Bratislava, and your Slovak birth certificate, citizenship certificate, and passport follow.
The whole question, then, is whether the chain held — whether your parent was still a Slovak citizen on the day you were born.
What we check
The detail decides it
Establishing that the chain held means going through the family history carefully, on both sides of your birth date.
Your parents
- When they emigrated
- Whether they naturalized elsewhere, and in which year
- Whether they acquired another citizenship by any other route, and when
You
- When and where you were born — and what the law provided in that year
- Which other citizenships you hold, and how you acquired them
Slovak citizenship is harder to lose than most people assume
Emigrating does not end it, and neither does living abroad for a lifetime — so many families who assume the chain broke long ago find that it did not. But the rules on losing citizenship changed over the decades, and the answer for a given family turns on specific years and specific events. It is not a question anyone can answer from a summary of the family story; it takes a detailed review of the actual dates and documents, which is what we do before anything is filed.
The documents
What registration requires
Your long-form birth certificate, apostilled and translated by an official translator
Proof of your parent’s Slovak citizenship at the time of your birth — their birth certificate, citizenship certificate, or Slovak passport
Your parent’s naturalization records from the country they emigrated to, where these exist — dates matter more than anything else here
Marriage certificates or name-change documents where they apply
The process
Four stages, not six
- 1
Case review — we work through the dates and documents to establish that the chain held and citizenship passed to you, before anything is filed.
- 2
Registration — your birth is registered with the Special Registry in Bratislava.
- 3
Documents — your Slovak birth certificate and citizenship certificate are issued.
- 4
Passport — issued on the basis of your citizenship documents.
Worth knowing
Why this route is worth checking first
Registration is significantly faster than a citizenship application — typically months, not years.
Slovakia does not ask you to give up another citizenship here either — but check what your own country permits, as some require renunciation.
If it turns out the chain was broken, citizenship by descent is usually available instead — the same family documents serve both routes, so the work is not wasted.
Think this might be you?
Tell us when your parents emigrated and what documents you hold. We’ll review the case at no charge and tell you whether this route is worth pursuing — and if it is, registration is the shortest way to a Slovak passport there is.