INPS prepares the lists of beneficiaries: there is no need to apply. The card is available to families with ISEE up to 15 thousand euros according to the established priority criteria. The first cards could arrive at the end of October
Over one million Italian families will receive the Card Dedicated to You 2026. INPS work has started to draw up the lists of beneficiaries: 500 euros to help those with a low income cover the cost of food shopping. There is no need to submit an application, if you are entitled to the contribution you will receive the card starting from the end of October.
Card Dedicated to You 2026: what the spending bonus is and how it works
The Card Dedicated to You is a one-off financial support, distributed not via bank transfer but with a prepaid and rechargeable electronic card made available by Poste Italiane. A contribution of 500 euros is loaded onto the card for each family unit, to be spent exclusively on the purchase of basic food items (alcoholic beverages are excluded, among other things). The mechanism that leads to identifying the beneficiaries involves various subjects. INPS identifies the beneficiaries, the Municipalities verify and integrate the lists, Poste Italiane prints and delivers the cards. For 2026 the total number of cards available has been set at 1,177,597about 20 thousand more than in the past.
Who is entitled to the Card Dedicated to You: ISEE requirements and priority criteria
The main requirement to benefit from the Card Dedicated to You is to have a Ordinary ISEE not exceeding 15 thousand euroswith all members of the nucleus regularly registered in the Registry of the resident population. But it is not enough to have the ISEE that falls within the parameters. INPS applies a priority scale among families who meet the income requirement. Precedence to families of at least three people with a member born before 31 December 2012, starting from those with the lowest ISEE. Another criterion that moves you up in the ranking is to be a nucleus of at least three members with a person born by 31 December 2008 and finally the other nuclei arrive with at least three members, always based on the increasing ISEE. Only if, after these steps, there are unassigned cards left, can the Municipalities also allocate them to families in obvious economic difficulty, including those made up of a single person. It is also expected only one card per family unitand the measure is incompatible with other income supports such as the Inclusion Allowance, the Naspi, the Dis-Coll or the Integration Fund, if received by a family member. No questions are required: those who meet the requirements will be identified directly. The only thing to do is make sure you have your ISEE updated.
When the 500 euros arrive: the stages between INPS, Municipalities and the Italian Post Office
Now that the number of Cards Dedicated to You available is official, INPS has about a month to prepare the rankings. Then the Municipalities have 20 days to check and, if necessary, correct the lists and finally the INPS has another 10 days to transmit the definitive lists to Poste Italiane which will print and send the cards to those who are entitled to them. Doing the math, it takes more than two months. The first cards could therefore be delivered as early as the end of October, but it is more realistic to imagine that the majority of families will receive the Card Dedicated to You during November. Anyone who gets the measure for the first time will not have it arrive directly at home, but will be summoned to a post office for collection; those who have already received it in the past will find it automatically sent to their residence address. Once activated, the card must be used at least once by 16 December, under penalty of losing the benefit, while the entire amount must be spent by 10 October 2027.
The cities with the most beneficiaries: from Naples to Milan, the map of the funds
The distribution of cards is not uniform throughout Italy, but takes into account the population resident in each municipality and the gap between the average local and national income. The cities with the most cards awarded are Naples, Rome, Palermo, Milan and Catania. At a regional level, the South leads the ranking, with Campania, Sicily and Puglia in first place in terms of overall number of cards assigned; among the Northern regions, however, Lombardy has the highest number of beneficiaries. At the opposite end of the ranking are cities such as Ancona, Udine, Arezzo, Cesena and Pesaro, the only ones among the most populous centers to fall below the threshold of one thousand beneficiaries.
