Who is exempt from the citizenship test in Europe

Across the European countries whose own legal texts we read for this piece, there are exactly three things that get you out of a citizenship test: your age, a diagnosed illness or disability, and — in one country — the passport you were born with. The list is short and fairly similar everywhere. What differs, sharply, is who decides and what you have to produce.

This is a comparison of exemptions, not of exams. Formats, fees and pass marks are in four European citizenship exams compared with numbers, and if you are applying in Portugal, the 2026 Portuguese citizenship test guide is the place to start.

The United Kingdom: a waiver with no age written into it

British law treats English and «knowledge about life in the United Kingdom» as two separate naturalisation requirements, and gives the Home Secretary power to set aside either, both or neither. The wording, in Schedule 1 to the British Nationality Act 1981, is one sentence:

Notice what is not in it: a number. «Age» is there; «65» is not, and it is not in the regulations that define how the requirement is met either — those say it is met by passing the Life in the UK Test, or by certification in certain cases of residence abroad. So an older applicant in Britain is asking for a discretion to be exercised, not claiming an automatic right. In practice that means a reasoned request and a decision that can go either way, which is a very different thing from a line in a regulation that simply does not apply to you.

Spain: the exemption that depends on your passport — and the one that does not exist

Spain asks residence applicants for two exams: DELE at level A2 for language, and CCSE for constitutional and sociocultural knowledge. The regulation exempts from the first anyone who already holds a DELE at A2 or above, and nationals of a closed list of Spanish-speaking countries — Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras and so on down to Venezuela.

From the CCSE it exempts nobody on grounds of nationality. An Argentine in Madrid sits no Spanish exam and sits the civic one — the symmetry most people assume simply is not in the text. Minors under eighteen, and people whose legal capacity has been modified by a court, are routed away from both exams and onto documents instead: their legal representatives file certificates from the training, residence, care or special-education centres the person attended. Separately, applicants with a disability are entitled to reasonable adjustments in both exams — support to sit the test, not permission to skip it.

Denmark: the only waiver in Europe decided by politicians

Denmark is the outlier, and structurally so: citizenship there is granted by an act of parliament naming each person, and the conditions live in a government circular. That circular requires a pass in the 2021 Indfødsretsprøven, and its waiver clause does not grant anything — it refers the case elsewhere.

What it says is that where quite special circumstances exist, the case is put before the Folketing’s naturalisation committee, which decides whether the Danish language exam and the citizenship exam can be dispensed with. The case is only put there if the applicant has been medically diagnosed with a long-term physical, psychological, sensory or intellectual impairment and, because of it, cannot — and has no reasonable prospect of being able to — meet the requirements, including sitting the exams on special terms and with assistive aids. As a rule the applicant must also have attended Danish classes and actually attempted the exams first.

Those special terms are set out in the order governing the exam: extended time, technical aids, an assistant appointed by the test centre’s head. None of them removes the exam. And age appears nowhere as a ground: a 70-year-old applicant in Denmark sits the same test as a 30-year-old.

Germany: the waiver is not a power, it is a consequence

German naturalisation asks for two things that matter here: sufficient knowledge of German (§ 10(1) sentence 1 no. 6 StAG) and knowledge of the legal and social order and living conditions in Germany (no. 7), the latter normally proved by the Einbürgerungstest. The next subsection sets both aside — and, for the test, goes further in a second sentence that is easy to skip:

The two sentences do not waive the same thing. The first is about illness, disability and age, and it removes both requirements at once. The second mentions no health ground at all: it removes only number 7 — the Einbürgerungstest itself — in two further cases, which the section identifies by cross-reference to subsection 4, sentence 3, and to subsection 4a. Those are full exemptions from the exam, not special conditions for sitting it, which makes the German list of people who do not take the test longer than the illness sentence suggests. Anyone who thinks they fall into one of the two has to read those subsections at source: this piece quotes what it read, § 10(6).

Note the difference from the UK. The British text confers a power («the Secretary of State may waive»); the German text states a consequence («are waived»), which reads closer to an entitlement than to a favour. But note what is still missing: a number. Age is written down — as it is in the British text, which names it too — and in both statutes it appears as a cause of being unable to comply, not as a threshold past which the test stops applying. Someone who is seventy and able to study is not exempt for being seventy.

An adjustment is not an exemption — and mixing them up costs months

All five texts we read draw a sharp line that everyday conversation blurs. One thing is not sitting the exam. A different thing is sitting it under different conditions: extra time, technical equipment, an assistant in the room, support for applicants with a disability. The second exists everywhere and is granted fairly readily. The first is rare, and where it exists it is decided on the individual case.

Denmark makes the hierarchy so explicit that it becomes a condition: a waiver only goes to the parliamentary committee after the applicant has attempted the exam on special terms and with aids — or has shown that even that is beyond them. Adjustment comes first; exemption is only discussed once adjustment has failed. Spain says the same thing from the other end: the Instituto Cervantes must provide support and reasonable adjustments so that a disabled candidate can compete on equal terms, which assumes they compete.

The practical consequence matters if you are planning an application. Asking to be excused when what you actually have is an adjustment case is the fastest route to a refusal on formal grounds, and to starting again months later. Write the request for what it is: a request for special exam conditions, backed by the clinical report that justifies them, is a far easier document to grant than a request to do nothing at all.

What this means if you are applying in Portugal

Two things. First, the Portuguese exit is written into the requirement itself: the law asks you to prove knowledge of the language, culture, history and national symbols «through a test or a certificate». Someone who already holds a recognised certificate is not asking for a waiver at all — they are meeting the requirement by the other route. That is wider than the British discretion and far simpler than the Danish path, and it is why the Portuguese debate is usually about which certificates count rather than about who is excused.

Second, in none of these five countries does old age, by itself, automatically and expressly cancel the requirement. Where age counts, it counts as an argument — Britain — or as the cause of an inability that has to be shown, in Germany, or it does not count at all, as in Denmark. None of the five texts contains the rule most people are looking for: «past age X you do not sit the test».

If your case is Portuguese and the real question is «do I actually have to sit this?», our page on who is exempt from the Portuguese test goes situation by situation. If you already know you will be sitting it, the free practice test shows you where you stand in about ten minutes.