Армения предлагает ввести требование о проживании для получения гражданства по происхождению: что должны сделать заявители из диаспоры до 2028 года.

Armenian citizenship by descent carries no residence requirement today. A draft law published on 8 September 2026 would add two calendar years of lawful residence and at least 366 days of physical presence in the country, with effect from 1 January 2028.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs published two linked draft laws on e-draft.am for public discussion (project 10602). They would rewrite the residence conditions on every route to Armenian citizenship, and would for the first time require an applicant of Armenian ethnic origin to have actually lived in Armenia before acquiring citizenship. The public discussion closes on 23 September 2026.

These are drafts. They have not been adopted, and their wording can change during the public discussion or in Parliament. The draft carries one provision that matters more than anything else in it: applications filed through the electronic system before 1 January 2028 would be examined under today’s rules.

That transitional rule defines a window of roughly fifteen months. The rule is itself a draft provision, and transitional clauses are among the most commonly rewritten parts of a bill as it moves through Parliament. A narrower version would shorten the window. Treat fifteen months as the outer limit.

The change in one table

The single structural idea running through the whole bill is a counted-days floor. Armenian citizenship law has until now expressed residence conditions in years of residence status. The draft keeps the years and adds a minimum number of days actually spent in the country, on every route.

Each day count sits at a little over half its qualifying period, an average of roughly 183 days a year. The test the draft applies is time physically in the country, and a residence permit on file does not satisfy it.

What would change for citizenship by descent

Today, an applicant who establishes Armenian ethnic origin may apply from abroad, at an embassy, without ever having lived in Armenia, and is exempt from both the language test and the Constitution test.

Under the draft (new Article 13(3)), that applicant would additionally need:

• lawful residence in Armenia during the last two calendar years, and
• at least 366 days of physical presence in that period.

The language and Constitution exemptions would remain, and the draft keeps the route anchored in Article 47(4) of the Constitution, which permits a preference for persons of Armenian origin. It stays a simplified route. It stops being a route that can be completed without moving to Armenia. For what proving descent involves under the rules as they stand, see our guide to доказательство армянского происхождения согласно Декрету 97-Н.

Ordinary naturalisation: a counted-days requirement, for the first time

Anyone naturalising without an Armenian-origin or family basis, the foreign founder who built a company here, the long-settled resident, the person who came for work and stayed, qualifies today on three years of permanent residence, with the language and Constitution tests. The requirement is expressed in residence status and counts no days.

The draft would change both halves of that. The qualifying period would go from three years to five calendar years of lawful residence, and the applicant would have to show at least 915 days of physical presence within that period. The language and Constitution tests are unchanged.

The runway lengthens as well. Someone who takes up Армянская резиденция today under the current rules is three years from eligibility; the same person starting after the draft took effect would be five years away, and would need to have spent half of each of those years in the country.

A change that is easy to miss: spouses would face a language test

The explanatory note does not mention this change at all.

A foreign spouse of an Armenian citizen is exempt from the language requirement today. Spouses, children and parents of citizens, refugees and stateless persons are also exempt from the three-year residence requirement; a spouse qualifies after two years of marriage and 365 days of presence.

The draft (new Article 13(2)) would require three calendar years of lawful residence plus at least 549 days of physical presence, in addition to the family basis.

The language and Constitution requirements would also reach this group, through the draft’s choice of words. Article 13(2) waives only “the requirement laid down by point 1 of part 1”, singular, and point 1 is the residence-and-presence limb alone, leaving the language requirement (point 2) and the Constitution requirement (point 3) in place. Article 13(3), the ethnic-origin route, waives “the requirements laid down by part 1”, plural, the whole of part 1, so all three fall away. Article 13(4) waives parts 1, 2 and 3. The distinction between singular and plural, and between a point and a whole part, is used consistently across four consecutive provisions.

On that reading, a spouse route that is today largely a documentary exercise would become a three-year project with a language requirement attached.

The other proposed changes

Restoration would become a five-year wait

A former citizen can currently restore citizenship with no waiting period and no residence requirement. The draft would require five years from the termination decree, two years of residence and at least 366 days of presence, and would make restoration the exclusive route for former citizens: the ordinary acquisition grounds would not be available to them at all. The explanatory note gives, as one example of the behaviour being targeted, a parent renouncing citizenship in order to terminate a male child’s citizenship and so avoid or defer compulsory military service, followed later by restoration.

The state duties would rise sharply

USD equivalents at the CBA official rate of 363.28 AMD to USD 1 on 13 September 2026.

The oath would acquire a deadline

A citizenship decree would enter into force only when the oath is signed within one year. Miss the year and the decree is void, and the applicant must reapply on general grounds. The oath ceremony would be held only on Armenian territory.

Ethnic origin would be assessed by a dedicated commission

Origin is currently established through a church list together with supporting documents. The draft would create a commission, set up by order of the Minister of Internal Affairs, to assess origin on a combined basis: documents, archives, community and church certificates, and other evidence. The explanatory note ties this to 71 ethnicity-fraud cases referred to investigators between 2023 and the first half of 2026, and points to the Lithuanian, Greek, Israeli and German models of multi-layered verification.

Refusals would be reasoned, but the decree would not be

The state body’s conclusion would have to be reasoned, setting out facts and risks without disclosing protected information, while the decree itself would not need to state reasons. The draft states that the President’s discretion to grant citizenship is not subject to administrative or judicial alteration, and broadens the refusal ground to include “reasonable suspicion” of future harm.

How far that clause reaches is not settled, and we would not present it as settled in either direction. The explanatory note does not claim the decree is beyond the courts. It distinguishes the proper establishment and substantiation of the facts and risks in the administrative file, which is why the bill imposes the reasoned-conclusion duty in the first place, from the President’s final choice, which it describes as discretion exercised within the grounds and limits laid down by law, a choice among lawful outcomes. On our reading, a framing of that kind concedes that the discretion has legal boundaries, and the new reasoned-conclusion duty puts material on the file that did not have to be there before. Whether a statute can insulate the decree on these terms is a constitutional question that would have to be tested.

Citizenship by birth and the special-merit route are untouched.

Why the Ministry says it is doing this

The explanatory note is unusually direct. Between 1 January 2021 and 31 August 2026, 110,219 people acquired Armenian citizenship, and 108,002 of them took the non-resident “099” passport, a document issued to citizens who do not live in Armenia. On the Ministry’s account, the overwhelming majority of new citizens never settled in the country, and the residence and presence floors are the response.

Что это означает на практике

If you are eligible now on the ethnic-origin route and intend to apply, the transitional rule rewards filing early. An application filed through the system before 1 January 2028 would be examined under the current rules: no residence requirement, no physical-presence count, and the current state duty. An application filed on or after that date would face all three.

If you are naturalising on the ordinary route, do the arithmetic now. Five years in place of three is the visible change. The 915-day floor is the one that catches people, because it counts days spent in the country.

If you are a former citizen who may want to restore, the same logic applies more sharply, because the draft would impose a five-year wait from the date of the termination decree and would close every other route back.

If you have already been granted citizenship but have not taken the oath, note the proposed one-year limit. That provision would apply going forward, and an unsigned oath is a loose end to close in any event.

If you are mid-way through, or planning, a spouse or family-based application, read the language point above. It is the change most likely to surprise.

Why “before 1 January 2028” should not be read as “some time in 2027”

Filing is not a single act. On current practice, pre-approval of an electronic application and then securing an appointment slot take roughly three months between them, before the substantive stages begin, and that is at today’s volumes. A published deadline of this kind pulls applications forward into its final months, and appointment capacity is the part of the system least able to absorb the surge. Obtaining, legalising and translating civil documents from abroad adds several months more for most diaspora files. A decision taken in late 2027 is a decision taken too late.

None of this is a reason to rush an application that is not ready. A refused application is worse than a later one, and the draft broadens the refusal grounds. If you are eligible and have been deferring the decision, the deferral now has a price attached to it.

A separate deadline, for a narrower group: “recognition” ends on 31 December 2026

The “recognition” route covers certain former Soviet and Armenian SSR citizens, stateless persons of Armenian origin resident in Armenia, and connected categories. It expires on 31 December 2026 under the law as it stands today. That deadline is independent of this bill, of the public discussion, and of anything happening in Parliament.

The draft would repeal the recognition provisions altogether (Articles 9(1)(1) and 10), but by the time it took effect in 2028 the route would already have expired under the current sunset. Recognition has been a small route in any case: 51 cases in 2021, 134 in 2022, 125 in 2023, 87 in 2024, 153 in 2025 and 64 in 2026. Anyone who may fall into this category needs to move in 2026.

The public discussion is open until 23 September 2026

These drafts are published for public discussion on e-draft.am as project 10602, and comment is open until 23 September 2026.

The residence requirement for ethnic-origin applicants is the provision with the widest effect on the diaspora, and there is a constitutional argument to be made about its shape. Article 47(4) of the Constitution provides for a simplified procedure for persons of Armenian origin, and the Ministry’s own explanatory note relies on that provision: it says the residence and presence periods for ethnic Armenians were set “with more simplified regulation” precisely on the basis of Article 47(4), so as to preserve the facilitated character of the process. The note therefore accepts that the preference must remain a facilitated one. Whether a two-year residence requirement with a 366-day presence count is still a facilitated procedure, or has become an ordinary one on a shorter clock, is a fair question to put during the discussion period.

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