Acquiring Hungarian citizenship: all you need to know about the citizenship exam
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Acquiring Hungarian citizenship is not easy, but the advantages far outweigh the difficulties. For example, you can travel freely in the Schengen Zone, you can get a Hungarian passport, one of the world’s strongest travel documents, allowing you to access 187 visa-free destinations. Those who would like to become a Hungarian citizen but are not children of Hungarian citizens, married to Hungarian citizens or able to prove their Hungarian ancestry, must take a citizenship exam in the final stages of the process. We’ll show you what you have to know to pass that easily.
Three “easy” pathways to get Hungarian citizenship
In THIS article, we summed up the main pathways a foreigner can acquire Hungarian citizenship. We wrote about five main avenues: naturalisation, simplified naturalisation, by descent, by marriage and buying a Golden Visa (which is the investment route). Only foreigners who can speak Hungarian and prove their Hungarian descent are eligible for simplified naturalisation. This route is mainly for those who live in the former territories of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Carpathian Basin or are descendants of the Hungarian expats who left the country in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Being a child or spouse of a Hungarian citizen also makes you eligible for Hungarian citizenship easily. In the former case, you do not have to take any exams, in the latter, you only have to prove that you can speak and understand Hungarian.
The other two routes are much more difficult since they include exams, and you have to prove a good command of the Hungarian language to pass them. We summed up in THIS article how you can buy a Golden Visa and acquire temporary residency in Hungary for 10 years, which can be extended by another 10 years. If you spend enough time in the country, you become eligible to get permanent residency, which allows you to apply for Hungarian citizenship after 8 years spent in the country. HERE you may read more about this pathway.
Passing a citizenship exam is mandatory
However, even if you bought a Golden Visa or “just” became eligible for citizenship after living long enough in Hungary, you have to take a so-called citizenship exam to win Hungarian citizenship. The relevant laws exempt only a few people from this obligation: children or persons with limited legal capacity, persons educated in Hungarian, those over 60 years old at application, or those with medical conditions preventing the exam.
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