CILS or CELI for Italian citizenship: what actually differs

The CVCL's 2026 calendar carries a footnote under the session table, and it is easy to scroll past: Le sessioni CELI Immigrati sono disponibili solo per i centri italiani. The CELI Immigrati sessions — which is the family the citizenship exam belongs to — are available only at exam centres inside Italy.

Siena says the opposite about its own exam in the first line of its registration page: Per sostenere un esame CILS, devi rivolgerti, in Italia e all'estero, alla sede d'esame dove hai intenzione di sostenere l'esame. In Italy and abroad, and its 2026 calendar marks no level as domestic-only.

So if you are sitting the exam in São Paulo, Buenos Aires, London or New York, this comparison is already over and the answer is the CILS. The rest of this page is for people who can reach an Italian exam centre and therefore genuinely have a choice.

CILS B1 Cittadinanza: six sittings in 2026 — 19 February, 14 April, 16 June, 22 July, 21 October and 3 December. It is one of only two CILS lines offered at every date in the year, which is not an accident: the other is A2 Integrazione, the permit exam.

CELI 2 i cittadinanza: three — 18 February, 6 May and 16 September, with the 2027 calendar following the same shape on 17 February, 20 May and 15 September.

Twice as many chances is not an abstraction when a missed sitting is measured against a consulate appointment or a deadline on a file. And the gap between attempts is what actually bites: on the CELI calendar, missing September means waiting until February.

Siena publishes one line: I risultati degli esami saranno disponibili dopo circa 3 mesi. Non si eseguono valutazioni anticipate. About three months from the exam, and no early marking for anyone.

Perugia's regulation publishes a longer figure and a different starting gun: results come all'incirca 90 giorni lavorativi — about ninety working days, which is roughly eighteen weeks — and the count runs a partire dalla data di ricezione degli elaborati dei candidati da parte del CVCL. From the day Perugia receives your scripts, not from the day you sat the exam.

That second clause is the part worth reading twice. Your own wait is ninety working days plus however long your papers take to travel from your exam centre to Perugia, and nothing published puts a number on that leg. The candidate-side wait is therefore longer than the figure, by an amount neither you nor the body states.

Both figures are hedged, by circa and by all'incirca, and we keep both hedges rather than converting them into promises. Our exam-timelines comparison shows how they sit against the other bodies, each with the wording it published.

Both bodies let a partial pass carry, which the DELE does not. They do it differently enough that it can decide the choice.

The CILS carries individual skills, for eighteen months. Fail some and pass others and you receive an attestato di capitalizzazione listing both sets, and entro 18 mesi you may return and sit only the skills you failed, at the same level. It need not be the same exam centre.

The CELI carries a whole half, for one year, at 70% of the fee. The regulation splits the exam into a written part (reading, written production, linguistic competence from CELI 3 upward, and listening) and an oral part. If you pass one and fail the other, you may capitalizzare per un anno il risultato parziale, re-sitting the failed part within that year, pagando il 70% della tassa complessiva, at the same level and type.

The practical difference is granularity and price. A candidate who failed only listening re-sits listening alone at Siena, and at Perugia re-sits the entire written paper, listening included, for 70% of the full fee. A candidate who failed only the interview is better off at Perugia, where one oral is a clean, well-defined re-sit. Twelve months against eighteen matters less than which unit the body carries.

CILS. Every skill is scored on its own and you must reach the threshold in each of them. The total runs to 60 points at A1 and A2 and to 100 from B1 upward, so a comfortable total that hides one weak skill is not a pass.

CELI. The rule is at the level of the two halves: the exam is passed if the candidate reached the minimum score tanto nella parte scritta quanto in quella orale. The result is then reported as a letter: A, B and C are passes (excellent, good, sufficient) and D and E are fails. At A1 and A2 the CVCL reports only positive or negative, with no grade at all.

That letter is a small, real advantage of the CELI at B1 and above if anyone will ever look at how well you did rather than whether you passed. For a nationality file, nobody will.

Both bodies open a door the Spanish DELE closes flatly, and both open it through the same Italian freedom-of-information law.

Siena gives you thirty days from the publication of results to ask to see your own papers: a written request to trasparenzacertificazioni@unistrasi.it with your name, place and date of birth, matricola number and email, a copy of a valid identity document, and the access fee under Legge 241/90. Its FAQ also says an appeal is simply an email to the same address.

Perugia answers it in two steps. Questions about your result go to certificazione@unistrapg.it, and a formal right of access to the records is exercised through the university's central administration, citing L. 241/1990 art. 22 and following and D.P.R. 184/2006. No deadline is printed on the regulation page for that route, which is not the same as there being none.

For contrast, the Instituto Cervantes states that requests to access, return or reproduce DELE exam documentation will not be entertained, and charges 60% of the fee for a review that can come back lower than the grade you appealed. Two Italian bodies say yes and one Spanish body says no; the comparison is ours, and each half comes from the body's own page.

Neither body publishes a price, and they decline in different ways.

Siena routes you to the exam centre. The Siena centre's own instructions have a section headed tassa di esame that gives the PagoPA link, the bank account and the IBAN, insists the enrolment form is completed before you pay, and never names an amount. It does name one hard condition: La tassa d'esame non potrà essere rimborsata per alcun motivo — never refunded, though in documented exceptional cases it can be moved to a later sitting within eighteen months of the original registration.

Perugia regulates the fee without publishing it. The amount comes from the convention between the CVCL and each individual exam centre, it includes Italian stamp duty, and it is owed in full to the CVCL. The centre collects it when you enrol and is required to state it separately: il Centro è tenuto a specificare il prezzo unitario della tassa di iscrizione all'esame CELI, scorporato da eventuali oneri aggiuntivi such as preparation courses or admin charges.

That last rule is worth using. If a CELI centre quotes you one number for “exam and course”, its own awarding body requires it to break the exam fee out for you, and you are entitled to ask.

One more Perugia provision with money in it: a candidate who misses the exam through illness, with a medical certificate, may sit the immediately following session at the same centre without paying again, provided they file a proper enrolment application by the deadline.

CILS closes registration 30 or 31 days before four of the 2026 sittings, and 40 days before the June and December ones, which are exactly the two dates every level is offered at. Those are the body's own printed dates subtracted.

CELI closes between 26 and 35 days ahead, set per session: 13 February for the 11 March sitting, 5 May for 9 June, 9 October for 11 November, and for the citizenship line 16 January, 10 April and 14 August.

In both systems the dates are national and the enrolment is local, so the centre you pick is who you talk to. One quirk on each side: the CILS's April C1 sitting is reserved for medical specialty trainees, and the CELI's C1 and C2 appear at only two sittings a year, in June and November.

One notice is identical on both sites, word for word, because both bodies belong to the CLIQ association. Since 1 January 2024, candidates for the A2 permit exam who are found to be unable to read or write are covered by specific procedures, and both bodies say those can only be explained in person at an authorised centre in Italy, before enrolment, never by email or telephone.

If you are preparing for either, our guides go level by level: the CILS results and capitalizzazione, and the CELI's three candidate lines. Teachers who prepare candidates for both are on our Italian page, setting their own lesson lengths and packages.