You may qualify for Czech citizenship through two different paths, depending on your and your ancestors’ exact circumstances.
The essential question is whether your parent was a Czech (or Czechoslovak) citizen at the time of your birth and whether the previous “chain of citizenship” was broken at some point. As a rule of thumb, the earlier your ancestor left Czechia, the less likely you are to qualify for verification of citizenship and a Czech Citizenship Certificate. You may check the rules here Czech Citizenship by Descent -
Verification.
If you do not qualify for a Citizenship Certificate, but you have a parent or a grandparent who had lost their Czech/Czechoslovak citizenship at some point, you may be eligible to acquire Czech citizenship by declaration Czech Citizenship by Descent - Declaration. Additionally, you may qualify for Czech citizenship by declaration, if you have an ancestor born abroad prior to 1954 to Czech parents.
The key question is whether one of your parents (or both if you were born before 1969) were citizens at the time of your birth. If you’re unsure, then you need to figure out whether their parents were citizens at the time of their birth.
Here are some of the rules:
All you need is 1 Czech parent.
Those who naturalized (acquired foreign citizenship) between 1993 and 2013 lost their Czech citizenship.
Again, all that is required is 1 Czech/Czechoslovak parent.
There were no provisions for automatic loss of citizenship(except for naturalizing in certain countries, most notably the United States), but citizenship could have been rescinded by an act of the Interior Ministry. This was quite rare nevertheless.
Citizenship was only passed automatically to children born abroad if they had 2 Czech/Czechoslovak parents.
Again, there were no automatic loss provisions, but the Interior Ministry had the power to rescind citizenship and certain exceptions apply, most notably naturalization in the United States. In certain circumstances, until 1958, women would lose their citizenship by marrying a foreigner.
This topic is extremely complicated and involves Austro-Hungarian legislation from as far back as 1834. Prior to 1922, the mere act of emigration could have meant automatic loss of citizenship. People who left between 1922 and 1949 generally preserved their citizenship, with a couple of exceptions. Most notably, women would lose their citizenship by marrying a foreigner.
Contrary to what you may have heard, immigrating before Czechoslovakia became a state, ie. before 1918, does not necessarily mean the emigrant wasn’t a Czechoslovak citizen.
Eligibility Rules:
You are not required to speak Czech or to live in the Czech Republic.
In certain circumstances, loss of citizenship is not required - this is mostly if you have an ancestor that was born abroad to Czechoslovak parents prior to 1954 or a Czechoslovak father prior to 1949.
You may apply at your local Czech embassy or consulate (map). Required documents:
All non-Czech documents must be translated to Czech and all non-EU documents must be either apostilled or “super-legalized”.
