Proposals to lengthen the residence requirement have surfaced more than once, and each round leaves people unsure whether their own timeline just moved. Telling a bill in preparation apart from one passed into law decides whether anything has actually changed for applicants counting years.
Not yet, and it's easy to get confused because there have been two separate attempts. An earlier bill to extend it from five to seven years actually passed the Tweede Kamer back in 2016 but was rejected by the Eerste Kamer in 2017 — dead. The current one is a 2025 cabinet proposal to go further, from five straight to ten years, plus a requirement to show you're "fully integrated." That was announced in September 2025 and went through a public consultation that closed in December. It's since hit friction: in January 2026 the government's own regulatory-burden watchdog, the Adviescollege toetsing regeldruk, advised against submitting the bill as drafted, saying the purpose of the change wasn't clearly established. Whether that pushback stalls it, or the cabinet pushes ahead anyway toward the Raad van State and eventually the Tweede Kamer, isn't settled as of August 2026 — this is still a bill in preparation, not something before parliament for a vote, and definitely not law. The five-year rule is what applies right now. Given the pace of Dutch coalition politics and the pushback it's already getting, don't plan your own naturalisation timeline around either number — check rijksoverheid.nl and ind.nl periodically instead.