Three months after leaving office as New York City’s 111th mayor, Eric Adams has been granted Albanian citizenship.
Albanian President Bajram Begaj signed a special presidential decree on April 10, 2026 formalizing the decision and issuing Adams an Albanian passport.
The citizenship was granted at Adams’s own request. That is what the decree says.
Beyond that, Albania has released no additional information about the reasons behind the decision or the specific procedures that led to it.
Adams is 65 years old, a former NYPD captain, and a one-term mayor of the largest city in the United States.
He left office on January 1, 2026, when Zohran Mamdani succeeded him. He is now a private citizen of the United States with, apparently, an Albanian passport.
What Led To Adams Getting An Albanian Citizenship?
The groundwork for the citizenship had been building for years, and the most concrete recent step was a trip Adams took to Albania in October 2025.
At that point he was still the sitting mayor of New York but had already withdrawn from his reelection campaign. During the visit he met with Prime Minister Edi Rama.
The two discussed areas of potential cooperation including tourism, business, and technology. No citizenship discussions were publicly reported at the time.
What was already well established by then was Adams’s relationship with New York’s Albanian community.
New York City is home to one of the largest Albanian diaspora communities in the United States, concentrated heavily in the Bronx and Staten Island.
Throughout his political career Adams attended Albanian cultural events, showed up at commemorative gatherings, spoke publicly about Albanian-American contributions to the city’s public safety, business sector, and community life.
For a politician running in New York City, cultivating the Albanian community is smart politics. Adams did it consistently and by most accounts genuinely.
The decision to grant citizenship through a special presidential decree rather than standard naturalization is significant on its own terms.
Albania’s ordinary naturalization path requires years of residency, language proficiency, and a formal application process that takes time.
The special decree mechanism exists precisely to bypass that process when a foreign national is deemed to have sufficient ties, stature, or benefit to the country to warrant extraordinary treatment.
Adams was not naturalized through the conventional pathway. He was handed citizenship by presidential order.
Who Is Eric Adams?
Adams grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He worked as an NYPD officer for more than twenty years, retiring as a captain.
He served in the New York State Senate from 2006 to 2013 representing a Brooklyn district. In 2013 he became the first Black American elected as Brooklyn Borough President.
He won the Democratic mayoral primary in 2021 in a crowded race that used ranked-choice voting and took office in January 2022 as the city’s second Black mayor.
His tenure was defined by an early emphasis on public safety, a reduction in crime rates back toward pre-pandemic levels, and a slow-moving catastrophe involving federal prosecutors.
In September 2024, Adams became the first sitting mayor of New York City to be criminally charged when he was indicted on five federal counts.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York accused him of receiving more than $100,000 in free airplane tickets and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish nationals over nearly a decade while serving in local government, and of using his positions to carry out favors in return.
The specific favors included allegations that he pressured the New York City Fire Department to allow a Turkish Consulate building to open despite legitimate safety concerns. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
What happened next was one of the stranger episodes in recent American political history.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department sent a memo to SDNY prosecutors on February 10, 2025 ordering them to drop the case, arguing that the prosecution was interfering with Adams’s ability to cooperate with the administration’s immigration enforcement priorities.
Adams had already been cultivating a conspicuously warm relationship with Trump, meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago, attending the inauguration, signing an executive order allowing ICE agents office space at Rikers Island, and publicly avoiding criticism of the president in a sanctuary city that had made resistance to federal immigration enforcement a matter of policy.
The DOJ’s order to drop the case triggered mass resignations. The acting US Attorney for the SDNY, Danielle Sassoon, refused to carry out the directive and resigned.
At least seven other federal prosecutors resigned. Four of Adams’s own deputy mayors stepped down over concerns that their boss had made himself beholden to Trump.
On April 2, 2025, US District Judge Dale Ho dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning the charges were gone permanently.
Ho’s ruling was pointed. He wrote that “everything here smacks of a bargain. Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
He dismissed with prejudice specifically so the threat of refiled charges could no longer be used as leverage over the mayor. He also noted that “Mayor Adams, like any person accused of a crime, is presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
Adams’s approval rating had fallen to 20 percent by March 2025. He dropped out of the Democratic primary the day after his charges were dismissed and attempted to run for reelection as an independent.
By September he had withdrawn from that race too, citing an inability to raise funds and the Campaign Finance Board’s decision to withhold public matching money.
His name remained on the November ballot. He endorsed Andrew Cuomo in late October. Mamdani won the general election on November 4, 2025. Adams left office December 31, 2025.
What Does Having An Albanian Citizenship Mean For Adams?
Albania has not explained why it granted this. That absence of explanation is the central fact that makes the story interesting.
The citizenship is real, it was published in Albania’s Official Gazette and signed by the president. The passport was issued. Adams applied for it. That is confirmed.
What is not confirmed is why Albania responded to that application with a special presidential decree rather than a standard process, and what the practical or diplomatic significance of the relationship is intended to be going forward.
The timing is notable. Adams left office three months ago. He has no formal power, no city resources, and no current electoral ambitions that anyone has publicly identified.
He is a former mayor with a complicated legacy, a dismissed federal indictment that a judge described as smelling like a bargain, and what appears to be an active interest in Albania.
Whether this citizenship reflects a purely personal connection Adams has cultivated over years with a community he genuinely cares about, or whether it signals something more formal about his future plans, is not something Albania or Adams has clarified.
The Albanian diaspora in New York is large, politically organized, and economically significant.
A former New York City mayor with Albanian citizenship and presumably ongoing ties to that community is not a trivial diplomatic asset regardless of what role he currently holds in American public life.
What is clear is that Adams asked for this. Albania said yes. An Albanian president signed a decree.
As of April 10, 2026, Eric Adams, born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, former NYPD captain, former mayor of New York City, holds an Albanian passport.
