Al seguito and the 2-year rule: do you have to wait?

The two-year rule arrived in December 2024, when DL 145/2024 was converted into law (L. 187/2024). The new c. 1-bis of art. 28 TU requires two years of uninterrupted legal residence in Italy at the time of the ricongiungimento request for a spouse, dependent adult children with a disability and parents. It does not apply to minor children or to holders of international protection - the Chieti prefettura says the same on the Interior Ministry site.

Al seguito is a separate route under art. 29 c. 4 TU: the family may enter together with someone holding a carta di soggiorno or a visa for employment with a contract of at least a year, for non-occasional self-employment, for study or for religious reasons, provided there is housing and income. That paragraph says nothing about two years, and the 2024 law kept the existing TU exceptions in force.

In the summer 2026 chats people went through the same wording: c. 1-bis speaks of a ricongiungimento request and does not mention al seguito, and families kept moving al seguito after the amendment without a two-year wait. There was a warning too: according to one consultant, some offices are already trying to apply the rule to al seguito, and there is no official Interior Ministry clarification.

Chat experience says the al seguito nulla osta is requested once the main applicant has their own visa D. If they entered alone and filed their kit at the post office, the family, by these accounts, can no longer be brought al seguito - what is left is waiting two years for ricongiungimento or looking at coesione familiare.