Non-EU quotas in Spain and Italy: how many places there really are
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England limits foreign players with points. Germany and the Netherlands do it with salary thresholds. Spain and Italy do it with quotas — a fixed number of places in the football rules themselves.
Everything on this page is taken from the Spanish federation’s competition rules for 2026/27 and the Italian federation’s official decision on non-EU registrations for 2026/27, which we downloaded and read.
For the other countries, see England and Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium.
Who counts as “non-EU”
In both countries, the rules apply to players who are not citizens of an EU or EEA country. Swiss players are treated exactly like EU players in Italy. If you hold a Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian or Icelandic passport, no quota applies to you.
Two groups are often assumed to be EU players and are not:
- British players. The UK has left the EU. Italy has a special rule for them — see below. For Spain, the rules refer to agreements with other countries without listing them, and we have not confirmed whether British players take a non-EU place.
- EU players with a second, non-EU nationality are fine. What counts is whether you hold an EU or EEA passport.
Spain: three places in Primera, two in Segunda
Article 22 of the RFEF’s rules for 2026/27 is short:
- A club may register at most 25 players in its first team.
- In Primera División, at most three of them may be non-EU players.
- In Segunda División, at most two.
- In both, those players may all be on the pitch at the same time. There is no separate limit on the team sheet.
The article adds that agreements signed by Spain or the EU with other countries are taken into account. In practice, this is why players from some countries outside the EU do not take up a non-EU place. The rules do not list those countries.
In depth: why so many Spanish clubs' non-EU players become Spanish
Three places is very few for a club that recruits heavily in South America. The way clubs free up a place is not through the football rules but through Spanish citizenship: once a player becomes Spanish, he no longer counts as non-EU.
We have not covered the naturalisation rules themselves on this page, because they are civil law rather than football law and we have not yet read the current text. What you can take from the football rules is this: a non-EU place is the scarcest resource a Spanish club has, and it will rarely use one on a teenager who has not yet proven himself.
Registration windows in 2026/27: 1 July to 1 September 2026, and 2 January to 1 February 2027, both until 23:59. Registration goes through LALIGA first, then the RFEF.
Italy: a cap on newcomers, not on the whole squad
Italy’s system is more detailed. Every season the FIGC publishes a decision that counts the non-EU players each club already has, on a fixed date — for 2026/27, 28 June 2026 — and sets how many more it may bring in from abroad.
| Club in 2026/27 | Non-EU players already registered on 28 June 2026 | New non-EU players it may sign from abroad |
|---|---|---|
| Serie A | None | Up to a total of three |
| Serie A | One or two | Up to two |
| Serie A | More than two | Up to two, and one of them must be a youth or senior international (see below) |
| Serie B | Any | None |
| Serie C | Any | None (except newly promoted clubs turning their own amateur players professional) |
The condition on the second signing, for Serie A clubs that already have more than two: the player must have been named in the matchday squad of his national team in his age category in at least two official matches in the past 12 months, or five during his career.
A player signed this way may only move to another Serie A club during the same season, and only in a different transfer window from the one he arrived in.
The back door: players already in Italy
The caps do not apply to non-EU players who were already registered with a professional club in Italy on 28 June 2026. And for an adult, they also do not apply if he:
- moved to Italy as a minor with his family, for reasons unrelated to sport, and lives there legally;
- was registered as a minor with FIFA’s approval, or under Italian laws that allow minors living in Italy to be registered; or
- has been registered for at least one season with an amateur club or a youth club.
For a minor, the caps do not apply as long as FIFA’s rules on minors and Italian law are respected.
This is the structural reason the Italian system matters to young players: a non-EU player who grew up in Italian football is not a quota player when he turns professional.
British and Albanian players
The FIGC treats British and Albanian players as equivalent to EU players for sporting purposes — but only up to a point. Each Serie A club may sign one British and one Albanian professional from abroad, outside the caps above, and like other new signings they may only move on to another Serie A club in a different window that season. Serie B and Serie C clubs get no such place.
In depth: what the Italian decision does not do
- It sets limits on new registrations from abroad, not a cap on the total number of non-EU players in a squad. A club that already has several keeps them.
- It applies only to professional clubs. It says nothing about amateur football, where different rules apply.
- It does not replace immigration law. Every signing must still respect Italy’s rules on entry and residence permits, and the FIGC’s places come out of a national quota for foreign athletes set by the government. We have not been able to confirm how large the football share of that quota is.
- It must be read again every season. The figures above are for 2026/27 only, and the reference date moves each year.
What we could not confirm
- Spain’s list of countries covered by agreements with the EU. The rules refer to them but do not list them, and we have not found an official RFEF list.
- Minimum salaries in Spain and Italy for 2026/27. These are set in collective agreements; we have not found the current figures published.
- The immigration side in both countries — work and residence permits, processing times, the age at which they can be issued. We have only covered the football rules here.
- Spanish naturalisation rules, as above.
The practical summary
If you are an EU or EEA citizen, Spanish and Italian quotas do not apply to you. If you are not, count the places before you count the offers: a Primera club has three, a Segunda club two, and a Serie B or Serie C club in Italy cannot sign you from abroad at all. In Italy, the most reliable route for a young non-EU player is to already be part of Italian football — not to arrive as a quota signing.