IMPORTANT REMINDER: All Dates in Prenot@mi are in the format of DAY/MONTH/YEAR. Ex: 01/08/2020 = August 1, 2020.
What is Prenot@mi? Prenot@mi is the online program used to make appointments inside the Italian consular network to obtain consular services. Prenota is derived from the Italian verb prenotare meaning “to reserve” and mi is a reflexive pronoun meaning “to me.” Therefore, Prenotami means to reserve for myself. Prenot@mi divides appointments up based on the different offices available within the consular services division, primarily: Citizenship, Passports, Visa Office, and the Stato Civile / Anagrafe Office.
Before You Begin: “Why can’t I find an appointment” is our most asked question, so we will answer that first before explaining all the basics of Prenot@mi.
Few citizenship appointments are released periodically by the consulates and there are hundreds of people vying for them. Appointments are usually gone within seconds of being released. When you log into Prenot@mi and attempt to pull up the calendar, you may receive an error or message that no appointments are available at this time. You might get all the way to the point of selecting an available appointment and then hit an inexplicable error message–this usually means someone else beat you in completing the booking for that appointment.
Additionally, the Prenot@mi website is often flooded with activity at midnight Rome time when appointments are released, sometimes making it impossible to log in or navigate through the site if you are successful in getting in.
Read below for more information and view the following video for examples.
Red: No availability on that day at the moment (aka: already booked)
Yellow: Medium availability of appoint-ment slots for this day.
Green: All appoint-ment slots available for this day.
Black: Not available (AKA: days they don’t have appointments [etc. public holidays, business days not open to the public], but also days they haven’t yet opened the availability on)
STEP BY STEP GUIDE: HOW TO MAKE AN APPOINTMENT IN PRENOT@MI
CREATE AN ACCOUNT
Access the “appointments” or Prenot@mi link from your consulate’s website or use the following link: https://prenotami.esteri.it/. Select the language you are comfortable with in the upper right. (EN for English.) Fill in all your personal details. If you are asked to provide an identity document number, your US drivers license or Passport number will suffice. When you are finished. Prenot@mi will email you a confirmation email with a link to click. Click that. Then you can log in.
Note: Manually overtype the year in any pop-up calendar so that you do not have to scroll to get to the year needed. So, for a birthdate, the calendar will default to the current year, but you can highlight the year by clicking on it, overtype with your birth year, and scroll to the appropriate month.
Also note that, in Italian, the United States is Stati Uniti. Depending on your browser settings and page translations, the US may appear as either. So, it might appear under S or U in a list.
ACCESS THE PRENOT@MI CALENDAR FOR THE APPROPRIATE OFFICE
You will click on “Make your reservation.”
Then click on “Citizenship” or “Passports” depending on which office you wish to make an appointment with. After this, some consulates will ask you for personal info such as your passport number (your US passport you used to register in Prenot@mi with), address, profession, etc. to verify your identity. Some might ask you what type of citizenship appointment you want, so you click on “Jure Sanguinis” for citizenship by descent.
Next will be a box for additional notes you wish to add, and a privacy statement. Once you accept that statement then you will come to the calendar that will show available (or unavailable dates).
HOW THE CALENDAR LOADS
The calendar will automatically default to the current month. Most consulates are booking months or years out. You may have to scroll forward to find a month with availability. If you are scrolling through red months and get to a month that has all black dates, it means appointments have not yet been released for that month (and months forward), so none are available at this time. You will need to check back at another time.
If there are any available appointments, you will see a date in yellow or green (see color coding section above).
You can click the date, and a list of available times will appear next to the calendar. Select your time and click confirm.
You will then be asked to type in a random 8-10 character “verification code”. Click confirm and if successful, it will show your appointment details. You can also see your appointment details under “My reservations” on the far left column.
COMMON ISSUES AND HELPFUL TIPS WITH HOW PRENOT@MI WORKS
Consulates typically release new appointments at midnight Rome time. How often this occurs is set by the consulate. Most consulates will release appointments two or three days per week and they are usually booking two or more years out. Boston releases a month at a time. Houston only has appointments twice a week, thus twice a week they release new dates, and they only do bookings for a couple months out.
TIMING: MIDNIGHT ROME TIME
Note, when midnight Rome time hits, the servers cannot handle the amount of people trying for new dates. The site will suddenly be taking 30+ seconds to load a page if you don’t get page loading errors. If it is 00:01 Rome time and you see a new date is red, that means the few openings they released are already gone. Yes, it can be brutal. People try time and time again to get an appointment for San Francisco as an example, while Detroit currently has over 2 months of openings. Again, each consulate does things differently.
WAITLISTS
A few consulates have implemented waitlists within Prenot@mi when no appointments are available. If this has been enabled for your consulate, you will either see the waitlist as an option in the Prenot@mi main menu or you will be redirected to the waitlist when attempting to access the calendar. When you join the waitlist, you are assigned a number. This number IS NOT the number of people ahead of you. The numbers are assigned in sequence from the time when the waitlists were first created. When an appointment becomes available, you will receive an email inviting you to accept it. It is important to check your email and spam folder regularly. Note that if you do enter the waitlist, you cannot browse for appointments that may become available outside of the waitlist process. See our tips for sooner appointments below on how to create a secondary account to continue browsing for appointments, once on the waitlist.
CANCELLATIONS
If someone cancels an appointment they had booked, some consulates have Prenot@mi set to immediately release it for grabs, that very second. If you log in now, and see nothing, logging in again in 5 minutes or 5 hours could have a different result. So, if you are ready for an appointment, checking frequently and randomly would be a great way to find an appointment, or a sooner one if you already have one booked maybe 16 months in the future. Related to the release of cancellations, changing of the calendar’s month does refresh what is available, and the site’s timer to auto log you out is 15 minutes. So, if you really want, you can leave the tab open, and change the months every 5 minutes to keep looking for an available appointment.
TIPS FOR MULTIPLE APPOINTMENTS
Most consulates only allow one adult per appointment. (Minor children of that adult can be included in the adult’s application without an additional appointment or fee.) If you already have one appointment booked, you cannot book a second. If you have multiple family members applying at the same consulate, create another Prenot@mi account using a different email address, and a different ID document (if requested).
TIPS FOR SOONER APPOINTMENTS
If you have an appointment years away and are looking for a sooner one or have entered your consulate’s waitlist and want to continue to browse for cancellations, the best way is to create another Prenot@mi account using a different email address, and a different ID document (if requested). Then you can log in at random and if one pops up, you won’t have to worry about canceling your position on the waitlist or your existing appointment. Some people have reported issues with creating a second account on the same device. Try another browser or another device if you have problems.
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