SPID stays at least until 2027, and meanwhile documents are moving into the IO app
AgID has renewed its agreements with SPID providers for two years, with the option to extend. Meanwhile the driving licence, health card and European Disability Card can already be kept on your phone — by residents too, not only Italian citizens.
Redazione Bahay 3 min read
In this article
Anyone with a SPID has wondered more than once in recent years: how long before it stops working? The answer, for now, is that it does not stop.
AgID — Italy's Agency for Digital Italy — announced on 8 October 2025 that it had renewed the agreements with SPID providers for two years, with the option of extending them by up to a further thirty-six months. In practice: SPID stands at least until 2027.
The stated reason is operational continuity during the shift towards the CIE, the electronic identity card, and the IT-Wallet, the digital wallet. It is not just any extension: it is the time needed so that nobody is locked out of public services while the system changes.
The figures behind the decision
In the same announcement AgID gives the numbers for digital identities in Italy: 96 million credentials issued in total, of which 41 million SPID and 55 million CIE.
The CIE has overtaken SPID, and that is the direction of travel. But forty-one million people do not move overnight, which is why both routes stay open together.
Meanwhile: three documents on your phone
The most concrete part of this shift has already arrived, and it is called «Documenti su IO», inside the IO public services app. In the Portafoglio (wallet) section you can load the digital versions of three documents:
- the driving licence, which in Italy proves you are authorised to drive if you are stopped;
- the health card — European Health Insurance Card, for access to National Health Service services;
- the European Disability Card, with the same uses already provided for the physical version in Italy — here is who can apply and how.
The service is free and optional: nobody is obliged, and the plastic documents remain valid.
The line that concerns readers of this site
Official communications contain a detail that often goes unnoticed, and here it belongs in large type: the service is available to all Italian citizens and residents aged eighteen or over with valid documents.
Residents, not only citizens. If you are resident in Italy, hold a valid document and are over eighteen, this concerns you too.
What you need in order to use it
One thing only, and it is the one many people still lack: a digital identity. You log into the IO app with SPID or with the CIE, open the Portafoglio section and choose which documents to load.
If you have neither, the cheapest route runs through the electronic identity card you probably already carry: here is how to use the CIE to log into public sites, without paying anyone a subscription.
What does not change
Three things, to avoid misunderstandings:
- physical documents remain valid: the phone version is added, it does not replace them;
- the residence permit is not among the documents you can load: you still need the real one;
- none of this changes your documents' expiry dates. An expired licence is just as expired inside the app.
Why we are writing about it now
Because this is the moment to get set up calmly, rather than in a hurry later. Those who already have a digital identity will pass through the change without noticing; those who do not risk finding themselves, in a few years, in front of public services that only open that way.
We will update this page when something changes: the date at the top says when we last checked it.
