Route one of three
Citizenship by descent
If your parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent was born in what is now Slovakia and held Czechoslovak citizenship, Slovak law gives you a direct route to citizenship — without moving to Slovakia, and without Slovakia asking you to give up the citizenship you already hold.
Who qualifies
Two things have to be documented
The 2022 amendment to the Citizenship Act opened citizenship to the descendants of Czechoslovak citizens born in the territory of present-day Slovakia, down to the third generation. In practice, you qualify if you can document two things:
A qualifying ancestor — a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent who was born in present-day Slovakia and held Czechoslovak citizenship.
An unbroken line of descent — civil records connecting you to that ancestor, generation by generation.
The territorial point matters: the ancestor must have been born within today’s Slovak borders. Families from areas that are now in Hungary, Ukraine, or the Czech Republic usually need to look at the SLA certificate instead — we check this carefully in every case review, because historical county borders don’t always match modern ones.
Children under 14
If a parent qualifies through the third generation, a child under 14 can be included in the parent’s application and acquire citizenship together with them. This matters for families whose children fall a generation too far back to qualify in their own right — worth checking before you look at the SLA route.
What changed
The 2026 reform
The 2026 reform removed the residence-permit step that previously stood in front of most descent applications. Applications are now submitted directly — at a Slovak embassy or consulate abroad, or at a district office in Slovakia — which shortened the overall process considerably.
Guides written before 2026 often describe the old procedure, which is one of the most common sources of confusion for applicants researching this on their own.
The documents
What a descent file is made of
A descent application is built from five kinds of records:
Your documents — passport, long-form birth certificate, and a short CV (životopis).
Your civil records — marriage certificate, divorce decree, or name-change documents where they apply.
The ancestor’s records — their Slovak birth record, certified from the state archives, and proof of Czechoslovak citizenship: an old passport, census sheets, passenger manifests, or naturalization paperwork.
The chain between you — a birth certificate for every generation from the ancestor down to you. Where the line runs through a woman, the marriage certificate documents the name change.
Background checks — from every country where you’ve lived more than 180 days in the last 15 years; for US applicants, the FBI Identity History Summary.
The two rules that catch people
Foreign documents must be apostilled in the country that issued them, and every non-Slovak document must be translated by an official translator accredited in Slovakia. The order matters — apostille first, then translation — and getting it wrong means paying twice.
The process
Six stages, honestly described
- 1
Case review — we confirm your eligibility and map exactly which documents your file needs.
- 2
Document collection — your records, the chain of certificates, and the ancestor’s records from the Slovak archives.
- 3
Translations and apostilles — arranged in the right order.
- 4
Submission — in person, at a Slovak embassy or consulate or at a district office in Slovakia.
- 5
Ministry decision — recently 6 to 12 months, within a statutory period of 24. A quiet stretch where nothing appears to be happening, and usually nothing is wrong.
- 6
Citizenship certificate and passport — the easy part, at last.
Dual citizenship
Check your own country first
Slovakia does not require you to renounce another citizenship in order to acquire Slovak citizenship by descent. Whether you can actually hold both depends on the law of the country you are a citizen of now.
The United States, Canada, Israel, and Australia permit dual citizenship — most of our clients are covered here.
Other countries do not. Russia, for example, requires renunciation of Russian citizenship in order to acquire another.
Check your own country’s rules before you begin, and tell us what you find. For most applicants this is a formality; for some it changes the decision entirely, and it is better to know that at the start than at the end.
Worth knowing
A few things people ask early
There is no language test and no residence requirement.
Each qualifying family member applies individually — parents and adult children often apply together, sharing the ancestor’s documentation.
A child under 14 can be included in a qualifying parent’s application.
Slovak citizenship is EU citizenship: the right to live, work, and study in any of the 27 member states.
Not sure whether your ancestor qualifies?
Send us what you know about your family history and what documents you hold. We’ll review the case at no charge and tell you whether it’s viable — and if it is, how we can help and what it would cost.