Forebear
Discover your ancestry and explore citizenship pathways through your family tree.
Explore citizenship by descent by country
Start with the main Forebear guides
What citizenship by descent means
Many countries grant citizenship based on ancestry rather than birthplace, a principle often called jus sanguinis. If a parent, grandparent, or in some cases a more distant ancestor held citizenship of one of these countries, their descendants may already qualify, or be able to reclaim citizenship that was lost through emigration, war, or occupation. The rules vary sharply by country: some look only at parents, others reach back multiple generations, and some depend on specific historical cutoff dates or restoration laws.
How Forebear helps
Forebear takes the family tree you already have, whether that is a GEDCOM file exported from genealogy software or details you enter directly, and checks it against the eligibility rules for each country's citizenship-by-descent pathway. Instead of reading through a dozen consular websites and law firm blog posts to figure out whether your own lineage qualifies, you get a structured view of which ancestors and which generational links matter for your specific case.
Why the details matter
Citizenship-by-descent claims commonly fail on details that are easy to miss without guidance: an ancestor who naturalised elsewhere before their child was born, an ancestor born just before or after a country's relevant cutoff date, or a generational limit that changed after older guides were written. The country pages below walk through the specific rules and common pitfalls for each of the countries Forebear currently covers.