Is the 3-year citizenship fast track still available in Germany?

No. §10 Abs. 3 StAG, the fast-track provision introduced in June 2024, was repealed effective 30 October 2025. The standard naturalization path now requires a minimum of 5 years of legal residence, with no shortcut to 3 years for general applicants.

I applied for citizenship under the 3-year rule before it was abolished. Do I still get it?

Almost certainly not. The repeal carries no transitional provision, so pending applications are judged under the law in force at the time of the final decision, not the law in force when the application was filed. A Verwaltungsgericht Trier ruling (8 K 5461/25.TR, 3 December 2025) confirmed this for an applicant who filed in April 2025.

Did the October 2025 change affect the 5-year standard path or dual citizenship?

No. Both survive untouched. The 5-year standard naturalization path (§10 StAG) and the right to keep your original nationality while becoming German, in place since the June 2024 reform, were not part of the October 2025 amendment. Only the 3-year fast track was removed.

Germany's Citizenship Fast Track Is Gone: What Changed

Germany's fast track to citizenship in 3 years is gone. The Bundestag voted to repeal it on 8 October 2025, and the change took effect on 30 October 2025. The standard path now requires a minimum of 5 years of legal residence again, with no shortcut available to general applicants, only 18 months after the same 3-year option was introduced.

If you've been tracking Germany's citizenship rules since the widely covered 2024 reform, here is what actually holds today, what got walked back, and what a pending application under the old rule is worth now.

What the June 2024 reform actually did

The Gesetz zur Modernisierung des Staatsangehörigkeitsrechts took effect on 27 June 2024 and changed three things. The standard residence requirement for naturalization dropped from 8 years to 5. A new fast track, §10 Absatz 3 StAG, let applicants with "besondere Integrationsleistungen" (special integration achievements, defined as outstanding academic, professional or civic accomplishments) and C1-level German naturalize after just 3 years. And Germany moved to allowing dual citizenship as the default: applicants no longer had to give up their original nationality, and Germans who acquired a second nationality no longer lost their German one (bpb.de).

Two of those three changes are still current law. Only one was reversed.

What changed on 30 October 2025

The governing coalition's agreement included a specific line: abolish the "Turbo-Einbürgerung" after 3 years. That commitment became the sixth amendment to the Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz, passed by the Bundestag on 8 October 2025 with 450 votes in favor to 134 against, published as BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 256, and in force from 30 October 2025.

The amendment deleted §10 Absatz 3 StAG outright. As the legal-aid site asyl.net summarized it at the time, the paragraph "introduced only in June 2024 is being struck again," and the standard path (Anspruchseinbürgerung under §10 StAG) can now be reached "at the earliest after 5 years of residence" (asyl.net). The current text of §10 Absatz 1 StAG, checked directly against the federal law database, confirms the 5-year minimum and adds a condition worth knowing on its own: the applicant must be able to support themselves and their dependents without drawing on Bürgergeld or Sozialhilfe benefits (SGB II or SGB XII), the livelihood requirement that decides many real citizenship timelines regardless of how many years someone has lived in Germany (Gesetze im Internet, §10 StAG).

If you applied under the 3-year rule before the repeal

This is the part that catches people off guard, and it has already been tested in court. German administrative law generally applies the law in force at the time a case is finally decided, not the law in force when the application was submitted, and the repeal carries no grandfathering clause for pending cases.

The Verwaltungsgericht Trier ruled on exactly this on 3 December 2025 (case 8 K 5461/25.TR): a Polish applicant who filed under §10 Absatz 3 StAG in April 2025, while the fast track was still valid, could not rely on it once the provision was gone by the time of the hearing. The court applied what German administrative law calls "unechte Rückwirkung," treating the change as reaching pending, undecided applications rather than only future ones, and found this permissible here. It rejected the applicant's argument that he'd relied on the old rule in good faith, pointing out that the repeal had been debated publicly and controversially for weeks before it passed, so the outcome was foreseeable. Public interest in requiring a longer residence period for durable integration, the court held, outweighed the individual's interest in the faster path.

Practically: if your application relied on the 3-year fast track and hasn't been decided yet, expect it to be assessed against the 5-year standard now in force, not the rule that existed when you filed.

What still stands, unchanged

Two routes that predate or run alongside the 3-year fast track were not touched by the October 2025 amendment:

Marriage to a German citizen (§9 StAG). Spouses or registered partners of German citizens can naturalize after just 3 years of residence, provided the marriage or partnership has lasted at least 2 years. That's a separate legal basis from §10 StAG entirely, and the October repeal never mentions it (Gesetze im Internet, §9 StAG).

Dual citizenship. The 2024 reform's shift to allowing multiple nationalities as standard practice was left fully intact. You still don't have to give up your original passport to naturalize as German, and this was never part of what the coalition agreement targeted for repeal.

What this means for your own timeline

For most people planning toward German citizenship today, the honest baseline is 5 years of legal residence, B1 German, a clean record, and the ability to support yourself without state benefits. Married to a German citizen for 2 years or more, plan around the 3-year §9 track instead. Either way, dual citizenship is not a trade-off you need to make anymore.

Ankommo's citizenship timeline calculator walks through your specific dates, whichever path applies, and flags the livelihood requirement before it becomes a surprise late in the process. If B1 German is the piece you still need, Ankommo's B1 course is built around exactly that certificate.

Related on Ankommo

Figures verified against the official sources below as of July 2026. Citizenship law can change again; confirm your specific case with your local Ausländerbehörde or Einbürgerungsbehörde before relying on any timeline here.