Minimum years of residence required to apply for citizenship (ordinary naturalisation, non-spousal route)
Minimum lawful residence (years) required to be eligible to apply for citizenship via ordinary naturalisation, excluding marriage-based routes.
Loading visualization...
Key Insights
- •Minimum residence requirements vary widely, from very short thresholds (2–3 years in several countries) to very long thresholds (20–30 years in a small number of states).
- •A common cluster of countries sets the ordinary naturalisation eligibility threshold around 5 years of lawful residence.
- •Some Gulf states and microstates show among the longest baseline residence requirements (often 20–30 years).
- •Cross-country comparability is strongest for baseline eligibility thresholds; comparability is weaker for total time-to-citizenship because administrative processing and discretionary approvals are not captured.
Country Rankings
Top 10 Countries
Bottom 10 Countries
Data Analysis
Value Distribution
How countries are distributed across the value range
Regional Comparison
Average values by world region (Global avg: 7.6years)
About This Statistic
This statistic measures the minimum number of years a foreign national must legally/habitually reside in a country before becoming eligible to submit an application for citizenship through the standard ("ordinary") naturalisation route. It explicitly excludes facilitated naturalisation through marriage and other special routes (e.g., ancestry, investment, exceptional merit), aiming to capture the baseline legal threshold.
The data are drawn from the GLOBALCIT/CITLAW comparative nationality law dataset (EUI), which codes ordinary naturalisation requirements in a country-comparable way. Values represent eligibility-to-apply (a legal minimum) rather than the total time to acquire citizenship, since administrative processing times and additional conditions (language, integration tests, good conduct, etc.) can add time and vary by applicant circumstances.
Methodology
Values are the legally stipulated minimum years of lawful/habitual residence required for eligibility to apply for ordinary naturalisation (non-spousal route), as coded in the GLOBALCIT/CITLAW comparative nationality law indicators. The mapped value is the baseline requirement for the standard pathway; where multiple ordinary pathways exist with different thresholds, the dataset coding reflects the ordinary/baseline route rather than exceptional or facilitated routes. Values are presented as integer years for cross-country comparability.
Full Data
| Rank ↑ | Country ↕ | Value ↕ |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Liechtenstein | 30.0years |
| 2 | Qatar | 25.0years |
| 3 | Bahrain | 25.0years |
| 4 | Kuwait | 20.0years |
| 5 | Oman | 20.0years |
| 6 | Uganda | 20.0years |
| 7 | Andorra | 20.0years |
| 8 | Chad | 15.0years |
| 9 | Republic of The Gambia | 15.0years |
| 10 | Jordan | 15.0years |
| 11 | Nepal | 15.0years |
| 12 | Nigeria | 15.0years |
| 13 | Antigua and Barbuda | 14.0years |
| 14 | India | 12.0years |
| 15 | Maldives | 12.0years |
| 16 | Seychelles | 11.0years |
| 17 | Burundi | 10.0years |
| 18 | Belarus | 10.0years |
| 19 | Central African Republic | 10.0years |
| 20 | Comoros | 10.0years |
| 21 | Republic of the Congo | 10.0years |
| 22 | Equatorial Guinea | 10.0years |
| 23 | Eritrea | 10.0years |
| 24 | Djibouti | 10.0years |
| 25 | Gabon | 10.0years |
| 26 | Georgia | 10.0years |
| 27 | Iraq | 10.0years |
| 28 | Italy | 10.0years |
| 29 | Lao People's Democratic Republic | 10.0years |
| 30 | Lebanon | 10.0years |
| 31 | Latvia | 10.0years |
| 32 | Libya | 10.0years |
| 33 | Lithuania | 10.0years |
| 34 | Malaysia | 10.0years |
| 35 | Monaco | 10.0years |
| 36 | Moldova, Republic of | 10.0years |
| 37 | Montenegro | 10.0years |
| 38 | Montserrat | 10.0years |
| 39 | Mozambique | 10.0years |
| 40 | Namibia | 10.0years |
| 41 | Vanuatu | 10.0years |
| 42 | Niger | 10.0years |
| 43 | Philippines | 10.0years |
| 44 | Poland | 10.0years |
| 45 | Rwanda | 10.0years |
| 46 | Saudi Arabia | 10.0years |
| 47 | Zimbabwe | 10.0years |
| 48 | South Sudan | 10.0years |
| 49 | Sudan | 10.0years |
| 50 | Switzerland | 10.0years |
| 51 | Egypt | 10.0years |
| 52 | Venezuela | 10.0years |
| 53 | Yemen | 10.0years |
| 54 | Zambia | 10.0years |
| 55 | Angola | 10.0years |
| 56 | Austria | 10.0years |
| 57 | Bhutan | 10.0years |
| 58 | Botswana | 10.0years |
| 59 | Denmark | 9.0years |
| 60 | Croatia | 8.0years |
| 61 | Estonia | 8.0years |
| 62 | Germany | 8.0years |
| 63 | Hungary | 8.0years |
| 64 | Papua New Guinea | 8.0years |
| 65 | Romania | 8.0years |
| 66 | Slovakia | 8.0years |
| 67 | Trinidad and Tobago | 8.0years |
| 68 | The Republic of North Macedonia | 8.0years |
| 69 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 8.0years |
| 70 | Bulgaria | 7.0years |
| 71 | Cambodia | 7.0years |
| 72 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 7.0years |
| 73 | Costa Rica | 7.0years |
| 74 | Cyprus | 7.0years |
| 75 | Greece | 7.0years |
| 76 | Grenada | 7.0years |
| 77 | Iceland | 7.0years |
| 78 | Kenya | 7.0years |
| 79 | Malawi | 7.0years |
| 80 | Nauru | 7.0years |
| 81 | New Caledonia | 7.0years |
| 82 | Norway | 7.0years |
| 83 | Somalia | 7.0years |
| 84 | Suriname | 7.0years |
| 85 | Turkmenistan | 7.0years |
| 86 | Tuvalu | 7.0years |
| 87 | Algeria | 7.0years |
| 88 | Barbados | 7.0years |
| 89 | Myanmar | 5.0years |
| 90 | Cameroon | 5.0years |
| 91 | Cape Verde | 5.0years |
| 92 | Chile | 5.0years |
| 93 | Colombia | 5.0years |
| 94 | Cuba | 5.0years |
| 95 | Czech Republic | 5.0years |
| 96 | El Salvador | 5.0years |
| 97 | Faroe Islands | 5.0years |
| 98 | Fiji | 5.0years |
| 99 | Finland | 5.0years |
| 100 | France | 5.0years |
| 101 | Ghana | 5.0years |
| 102 | Guatemala | 5.0years |
| 103 | Guinea | 5.0years |
| 104 | Guyana | 5.0years |
| 105 | Haiti | 5.0years |
| 106 | Indonesia | 5.0years |
| 107 | Islamic Republic of Iran | 5.0years |
| 108 | Ireland | 5.0years |
| 109 | Jamaica | 5.0years |
| 110 | Japan | 5.0years |
| 111 | Kazakhstan | 5.0years |
| 112 | Kyrgyzstan | 5.0years |
| 113 | Luxembourg | 5.0years |
| 114 | Madagascar | 5.0years |
| 115 | Mali | 5.0years |
| 116 | Malta | 5.0years |
| 117 | Mauritania | 5.0years |
| 118 | Mauritius | 5.0years |
| 119 | Mexico | 5.0years |
| 120 | Mongolia | 5.0years |
| 121 | Morocco | 5.0years |
| 122 | Netherlands | 5.0years |
| 123 | New Zealand | 5.0years |
| 124 | Pakistan | 5.0years |
| 125 | Panama | 5.0years |
| 126 | Portugal | 5.0years |
| 127 | Russian Federation | 5.0years |
| 128 | Senegal | 5.0years |
| 129 | Sierra Leone | 5.0years |
| 130 | Vietnam | 5.0years |
| 131 | South Africa | 5.0years |
| 132 | Eswatini | 5.0years |
| 133 | Sweden | 5.0years |
| 134 | Syrian Arab Republic | 5.0years |
| 135 | Tajikistan | 5.0years |
| 136 | Thailand | 5.0years |
| 137 | Togo | 5.0years |
| 138 | Tunisia | 5.0years |
| 139 | Türkiye | 5.0years |
| 140 | Ukraine | 5.0years |
| 141 | United Kingdom | 5.0years |
| 142 | United States of America | 5.0years |
| 143 | Uzbekistan | 5.0years |
| 144 | Afghanistan | 5.0years |
| 145 | Albania | 5.0years |
| 146 | Argentina | 5.0years |
| 147 | Bahamas | 5.0years |
| 148 | Bangladesh | 5.0years |
| 149 | Belgium | 5.0years |
| 150 | Belize | 5.0years |
| 151 | Solomon Islands | 5.0years |
| 152 | Brunei Darussalam | 5.0years |
| 153 | Ethiopia | 4.0years |
| 154 | Nicaragua | 4.0years |
| 155 | Australia | 4.0years |
| 156 | Brazil | 4.0years |
| 157 | Canada | 3.0years |
| 158 | Ecuador | 3.0years |
| 159 | Honduras | 3.0years |
| 160 | Israel | 3.0years |
| 161 | Paraguay | 3.0years |
| 162 | Serbia | 3.0years |
| 163 | Uruguay | 3.0years |
| 164 | Armenia | 3.0years |
| 165 | Bolivia | 3.0years |
| 166 | Dominican Republic | 2.0years |
| 167 | Liberia | 2.0years |
| 168 | Peru | 2.0years |
| 169 | Singapore | 2.0years |
| 170 | Azerbaijan | 2.0years |
| 171 | People's Republic of China | 0.0years |
Topics
Data Source
This data comes from GLOBALCIT / CITLAW (EUI – European University Institute) (2023).
View Original Source