2027 CILS Exam Dates for Italian Citizenship and Residency

The University for Foreigners of Siena has released the official CILS exam calendar for 2027. If you are working toward Italian citizenship, a long-term residence permit, university enrollment, or a work contract, these are the dates to plan around.

There are six sessions in 2027. Knowing the dates is only the first step, though. The exam you need will not be offered at every session, your local exam center may not offer it at all, and registering takes far longer than most people expect.

Official CILS exam dates 2027

The 2027 CILS exam sessions are February 18, April 8, June 10, July 22, October 21, and December 2.

These are the same dates you will see listed in Italian as the calendario esami CILS 2027.

Which levels run at each session, when to start exam prep and when to register

• February 18

  • Start exam prep: Aug 17.

  • Be ready to register: Dec 24.

  • Levels offered: A2 Integrazione, B1 Cittadinanza.

    
    

• April 8

  • Start exam prep: Oct 7.

  • Be ready to register: Feb 11.

  • Levels offered: A2 Standard, A2 Integrazione, B1 Cittadinanza, B2.

    
    

• June 10

  • Start exam prep: Dec 9.

  • Be ready to register: Apr 15.

  • Levels offered: All levels.

    
    

• July 22

  • Start exam prep: Jan 21.

  • Be ready to register: May 27.

  • Levels offered: A2 Integrazione, B1 Cittadinanza.

    
    

• October 21

  • Start exam prep: Apr 20.

  • Be ready to register: Aug 26.

  • Levels offered: A2 Standard, A2 Integrazione, B1 Cittadinanza.

    
    

• December 2

  • Start exam prep: Jun 1.

  • Be ready to register: Oct 7.

  • Levels offered: All levels.

The start-prep dates are six months before each exam, matching the access period on our programs. The register-by dates are eight weeks before. Treat the register-by date as the point at which you should already have your center chosen, your documents together, and your payment ready to send. Your center may open earlier, and some fill their seats within days, so earlier is always better.

Already past the "Start exam prep" date? You are not too late. Six months is the comfortable pace while living a healthy work-study-life balance. Our programs are self-paced, and students have prepared and passed in as little as two months when they could give it more hours each week.

The A1 levels run only if an exam center specifically requests them, so do not assume A1 is available near you even in June or December.

What this means for your exam

Taking A2 Integrazione for your residence permit? Also all six sessions.

Taking B1 Cittadinanza for citizenship? You have all six sessions. February, April, June, July, October, and December. This is the most frequently offered exam in the CILS calendar.

Taking B1 Standard for work, university, or vocational school? You have two. June 10 and December 2, and nothing else all year. If you miss June, the next opportunity is six months away. Plan backward from those two dates rather than assuming you can find a seat when you are ready.

Taking B2 for university admission? Three sessions: April 8, June 10, and December 2. B2 is the level that exempts non-EU students from the Italian language test for university enrollment.

Not sure which of these applies to you? Our complete CILS B1 exam guide compares B1 Cittadinanza and B1 Standard side by side. If you would rather just be told, take the two-minute quiz and we will point you to the right exam.

The dates are global. The registration is not.

One thing that confuses people organizing this from outside Italy: the exam dates are identical worldwide. June 10 is June 10 whether you sit the exam in Rome, São Paulo, Sydney, or Chicago. The University of Siena sets one calendar and every authorized center adheres to it.

Registration is the opposite. There is no single, global registration. Every center handles its own, on its own timeline, with its own procedures and its own cutoff. Two centers in the same city can open registration weeks apart.

So do not take a registration date you read on one center’s website, or in a Facebook group, or from a friend who took the exam in a different country, and assume it applies to you. The exam date is fixed and public. The registration window is local, and it is yours to find out.

Your exam center decides what it actually offers

This is the part that surprises people most, and it is why the calendar alone is not enough to plan with.

The University of Siena sets the dates and decides which levels run at each session. Exam centers work inside that. A center cannot add a level Siena is not running. Nobody can offer you B1 Standard in February, because B1 Standard does not exist in February.

What a center can do is offer less. It can choose to run only the June and December sessions. It can choose to offer only the standard B1 exam and never B1 Cittadinanza. Plenty of centers outside Italy do exactly that.

If that is your situation and citizenship is your goal, it is usually worth traveling to a center that does offer B1 Cittadinanza. It is a significantly easier exam than B1 Standard, narrower in scope and shorter, and the gap in preparation required is wider than the cost of a train ticket or a night in a hotel. We compare the two in CILS B1 Cittadinanza vs B1 Standard.

So a date appearing on the official calendar does not mean the exam you need is available near you on that date.

We have also heard of exam centers telling people that B1 Cittadinanza is no longer offered, or that it is no longer accepted for Italian citizenship. That is not true. B1 Cittadinanza is on all six 2027 sessions and it remains a valid language requirement for citizenship. If a center tells you otherwise, they are telling you what they have chosen to administer, not what the exam is.

We covered this in why the B1 Cittadinanza exam is getting harder to find abroad. If you are outside Italy, read it before building a timeline around any of these dates.

Find your exam center now, not when registration opens

This is the single best piece of preparation advice we can give you, and it has nothing to do with Italian.

Exam centers almost always fill up in the first week that registration opens. Some fill in the first days. This is why we are not giving you a closing date to work toward: by the time any published deadline arrives, the seats are usually long gone. What matters is being ready the moment the window opens.

And being ready takes longer than you think. Most centers still register candidates the old-fashioned way: a bank transfer, then an email with your payment receipt and documents attached. Some want specific forms. Some only answer email on certain days. Some will not hold your place until the payment clears.

That is not something you can finish in an afternoon. If you start on the day registration opens, you have very likely already missed it.

So do this now, whatever your exam date is:

• Identify the exam center you intend to use

• Contact them and ask when their registration opens

• Ask exactly what they require and how they want to be paid

• Have your documents and bank details ready before that date

Our guide on how to find and register for a CILS exam center walks you through the process, and CILS exam locations worldwide indicates where you need to look.

Give yourself enough runway

Once you have a date, work backward from it.

Our programs give you six months of access, and that is deliberate. It is enough time to prepare at a sustainable pace alongside work and everything else: to learn the format, work through past exams, find your weak sections, and fix them without cramming. They are self-paced, so if you can put in more hours each week you can move faster. What does not work is starting two or three weeks out. That is not preparing, it is hoping.

Pick your session, then start far enough in advance to actually use the time effectively.

Ready Set Italia builds exam preparation programs in English:

• B1 Cittadinanza for citizenship applicants

• B1 Standard for work, university, vocational school, and residency

• A2 Integrazione for the long-term residence permit

These are exam preparation programs, not Italian language courses. They assume you already have a basic knowledge of Italian and teach you how the exam is built and scored. Many of our students have passed starting with only basic Italian.

Not sure which exam you need? Take the two-minute quiz.