Malta: migration and citizenship
Who lives in Malta by citizenship and by country of birth, and how many people arrive and leave each year, from Eurostat. Every figure links to the table it was read from; where Eurostat publishes nothing for Malta, the page says so.
On 1 January 2024, foreign citizens and stateless people made up 28.1%* of the people living in Malta, against 9.6%* across the EU — the 2nd highest share of the 27 EU states that publish it.
In 2024, 34,033 people moved to Malta and 23,419 left: a difference of 10,614*, more arrivals than departures.
Citizens and foreigners
Residents of Malta on 1 January 2024, by the citizenship they hold. Every line is a separate figure Eurostat publishes; the site adds none of them together.
| Citizenship | People | Share of residents |
|---|---|---|
| All residents | 563,443 | — |
| Foreign citizens and stateless peopleOne group Eurostat publishes, shown beside the lines below | 158,368 | 28.1%* |
| Citizens of Malta | 405,075 | 71.9%* |
| Citizens of other EU countries | 43,698 | 7.8%* |
| Citizens of countries outside the EU | 114,670 | 20.4%* |
| Stateless people | 0 | 0.00%* |
| Citizenship not stated | 0 | 0.00%* |
Against the other EU states
Foreign citizens and stateless people as a share of residents on 1 January 2024, for the states ranked next to Malta. Only states that publish both figures that year are ranked.
| Rank | Country | Foreign citizens and stateless people, share of residents |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luxembourg | 47.2%* |
| 2 | Malta | 28.1%* |
| 3 | Cyprus | 24.0%* |
| 4 | Austria | 19.5%* |
| — | European Union (27, from 2020) (reference, not ranked) | 9.6%* |
Ranks compare the 27 EU member states. Eurostat’s figure for Cyprus covers the government-controlled area only.
Largest foreign citizenships
Eurostat's most recent tables hold no breakdown of Malta's residents by individual citizenship, so no list of the largest groups is shown. The gap is left as a gap: nothing is estimated, and nothing is borrowed from another country or another year.
Country of birth
Residents of Malta by where they were born, on 1 January 2025. This is a different question from citizenship: someone born abroad may hold Malta's citizenship, and someone born in Malta may not.
Arrivals and departures
People who moved to or left Malta during each calendar year, as reported to Eurostat. Arrivals and departures are separate published figures; the difference is the site's subtraction of the two for the same year.
| Year | Arrived | Left | Arrived minus left |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 34,033 | 23,419 | 10,614* |
| 2023 | 42,239 | 21,279 | 20,960* |
| 2022 | 34,964 | 13,166 | 21,798* |
| 2021 | 16,963 | 13,146 | 3,817* |
| 2020 | 14,751 | 13,804 | 947* |
| 2019 | 29,304 | 8,079 | 21,225* |
By citizenship, 2024
Arrivals and departures by the citizenship of the person moving. Each line is a separate published figure; none is added to another.
How to read these figures
- Citizenship is the legal bond between a person and a state. Country of birth is where a person was born. They are different facts and different tables, and neither records ethnicity, origin or descent.
- Residents counted at 1 January are a stock; arrivals and departures are events during a calendar year. A flow is never a change in a stock, and the two are not divided by each other here.
- Eurostat takes each country’s own statistics. Countries differ in who counts as an arrival or a resident, so comparisons between countries are approximate.
Cyprus, covered in full
Cyprus is the one country this site covers in full, down to its districts. Its immigration page is the deepest example of what a country page can hold.
Keep reading
Modification notice and disclaimer
The counts on this page are published by Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Union) and are reproduced unchanged. Humanity Observatory has additionally derived the following from them:
- A share of residents, computed by dividing one published count by another from the same table, country and date (for example foreign citizens by all residents).
- A country's rank among the EU states for its foreign-citizen share, computed by sorting the published figures of the states that publish both counts for the year.
- The difference between published immigration and published emigration for the same country and year (arrivals minus departures). It is a subtraction of two published figures, not a net-migration figure published by Eurostat.
- The ten largest individual citizenships, selected by sorting the published figures for the latest year in which most countries are published.
Source: Eurostat. Reuse terms.
* Calculated by Humanity Observatory from published figures.
Where these numbers come from → Compare the foreign-citizen share across countries →