Sydney consulate switches to appointment-only passport service, signaling wider digital shift

The Italian Consulate-General in Sydney has announced that, from 1 May 2026, passports will be issued exclusively by pre-booked appointment via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Prenot@MI portal. Walk-in requests will no longer be accepted. The move comes as Farnesina rolls out a nationwide plan to digitise front-office services and cut average wait times—which currently exceed 120 days in high-volume consulates such as Melbourne and London. Italian citizens residing in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory must create a Prenot@MI account, upload biometric-data consent forms and book one of 600 monthly slots. The consulate said emergency-travel documents will still be processed without appointment for proven medical or humanitarian reasons, but travellers must present supporting evidence. For global-mobility managers overseeing Italian assignees in Australia, the change means that last-minute business trips could be jeopardised if employees discover their passports are within six months of expiry. Best practice will be to run automated passport-expiry reports and prompt staff to secure slots well in advance.



Meanwhile, third-party specialists such as VisaHQ can streamline the administrative side by helping travellers verify document validity, compile the correct digital files and track submission deadlines. The company’s Italy-focused portal (https://www.visahq.com/italy/) provides step-by-step checklists and live assistance, giving both individual applicants and corporate mobility teams an extra safety net as the consulate switches to the new appointment-only model.

The consulate advised that group appointments for family members are allowed, provided each applicant’s documents are uploaded individually. Sydney is a pilot post for the ‘Smart-Consulate 2.0’ programme; if successful, appointment-only issuance will expand to 20 missions—including New York and Shanghai—by year-end. The ministry aims to integrate Prenot@MI with Italy’s new Digital Identity Wallet so that, from 2027, Italian expatriates can renew passports entirely online and collect them via secure courier, reducing physical visits to a single fingerprint capture every 10 years.