Why is Former NYC Mayor Getting An Albanian Passport?
Eric Adams left New York under a cloud of controversy, after the Trump administration had all charges against him dismissed. But his curious obsession with Albania has resurfaced.
Eric Adams has no Albanian ancestry. The former mayor of New York City does not speak Albanian. He was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
And yet on April 10, 2026, Albanian President Bajram Begaj signed a decree making him a citizen of the Republic of Albania. Within days, Adams had registered as a resident of Tirana and applied for a passport.
He tweeted that the citizenship was “honorary.” It isn’t.
This is a real citizenship, obtained through Article 9 of Albania’s citizenship law, which allows the president to naturalise a foreigner who meets none of the standard requirements, provided the country has a “scientific, economic, cultural or national interest” in doing so.
It is the same pathway used to grant citizenship to Dua Lipa in 2022. The difference is that Dua Lipa has Albanian-Kosovar heritage and is one of the most famous people on the planet.
Eric Adams is a former mayor who left office in December 2025 earlier under a cloud of federal corruption charges, a sexual assault lawsuit, millions of dollars in unpaid legal bills, and a circle of associates who are either indicted, convicted, or under investigation.
Albania has offered no public explanation of what national interest Adams serves. Albanian media have noticed.
To understand how a Brooklyn-born ex-cop ended up as a proud son of Skanderbeg you have to follow two threads at once: Adams’ deepening relationship with Albania, and his accelerating legal troubles.
The Courtship
Adams’ Albanian connections began during his mayoralty, modestly at first. In November 2022, he hosted the first Albanian flag-raising ceremony at Bowling Green, declaring Albania’s 110th anniversary day.
Eric Adams makes the sign of the double-headed eagle, a symbol of Albania, at a flag-raising ceremony in New York. Source: Forbes.
New York is home to one of the largest Albanian-American communities in the United States, and for a mayor who branded himself the “international mayor,” the Albanian community was one of many constituencies he courted. His son Jordan Coleman competed on Albania’s version of American Idol that same year, giving Adams a personal anecdote he would deploy repeatedly.
