Italy's consulates began accepting fully digital Type C (short-stay Schengen) and Type D (national long-stay) visa applications on 1 June, including the Digital Nomad Visa, the first large Schengen state to move document submission entirely online, with biometrics still taken in person 1. The visa itself is newer than the digital switch: its implementing decree appeared in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, Italy's official journal, on Monday 2 March, and consulates have taken applications since 18 March.
For a remote worker choosing a route into the EU, the change removes one concrete step. There is no longer an in-person appointment slot just to hand over paperwork, since a single biometrics visit now does that job. Greece, by contrast, still forces every nomad to obtain a Type D Visa at a consulate before arrival, having abolished in-country switching . Italy had already run its STR compliance plumbing early through the CIN listing code ; the visa side has now caught up, giving the country a two-track posture of early platform compliance and lower applicant friction.
Processing at Milan, Florence and San Francisco runs 35 to 45 days, which in practice means an applicant who files in June can reasonably plan an autumn move. One caveat tempers the appeal: the income thresholds did not change. The faster route is genuinely faster, yet it speeds the queue without widening the gate, so a nomad below the income floor gains nothing from the digital workflow. The bottleneck has moved rather than vanished. Consular appointment scarcity was a physical constraint Italy could not scale quickly; document review is one it can staff up, which is why Rome reached for digitisation rather than a threshold cut.
