The Austrian Citizenship Ceremony and What Happens After Approval
What happens once your Austrian citizenship is approved: the assurance, the renunciation step, the pledge to the Republic, the citizenship certificate and applying for your first passport.
The application is the long part. The ceremony is the short part that makes it official. Once your Austrian citizenship has been approved, there are a few final steps before you can call yourself a citizen and apply for a passport. Knowing the order of those steps removes the uncertainty from the end of the process.
This guide explains what happens after approval.
First, the assurance and the release
For most applicants, approval does not arrive in a single moment. Because Austria generally does not allow dual citizenship, the authority usually issues an assurance first. This tells you that citizenship will be granted once you have given up your current nationality.
You then arrange your release from your existing citizenship and provide proof of it, often a release certificate from your home country. You generally have up to two years to complete this. Only once that proof is in does the formal grant follow. So for many people the last real task is not the ceremony itself but obtaining the release that unlocks it.
If you fall under one of the limited exceptions to the renunciation rule, this step may not apply to you in the same way, but for most applicants it is part of the path to the ceremony.
The ceremony and the pledge
Once everything is in order, you are invited to the formal grant of citizenship. At this point you make a pledge to the Republic of Austria, a Gelöbnis, in which you affirm your loyalty to the Republic and its values. It is a solemn step rather than a long event, and it marks the moment your status changes.
The exact format is arranged by your provincial authority, so the setting and the level of formality vary from one province to another. Some hold group ceremonies, others are simpler. Your authority will tell you what to expect and what to bring.
The citizenship certificate
At or around the ceremony you receive your Staatsbürgerschaftsnachweis, the citizenship certificate. This document is important, because it is the official proof that you hold Austrian citizenship. Keep it safe. You will need to present it whenever you apply for an Austrian passport, and on other occasions where proof of citizenship is required.
Unlike a passport, the certificate is the underlying proof of status, so treat it as a permanent record rather than something to be replaced casually.
Applying for your passport and ID
Becoming a citizen does not automatically produce a passport. Once you have your citizenship certificate, you apply for your Austrian passport and identity card separately, through the responsible authority. This is the point at which most new citizens feel the practical benefit, because the passport is what allows visa-free travel and the full rights of an EU citizen.
It is worth budgeting a little time and money for this final step, since the passport application is its own process with its own fee.
A clean finish to a long process
After the ceremony and the paperwork, the process is complete. You are an Austrian citizen, with the rights and responsibilities that come with it, including the right to vote in Austrian elections.
Because the precise format of the ceremony and the passport process is arranged at provincial level, confirm the details with the citizenship authority where you live, and use oesterreich.gv.at as your reference point.
If you are reading this before your test rather than after your approval, the citizenship test is the step you can prepare for now. PassCitizen has all the Austrian citizenship test questions for free, by topic and by Bundesland, with full mock tests and no account needed.
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