Permanent residence programme

Moving to Malta: residency, tax and property

Malta is a narrow but expensive route: an English-speaking EU member whose programme is built from a property purchase, a €37,000 government contribution, a €60,000 administrative fee and a donation, all of them compulsory. It is also, since Portugal changed its nationality law, the shortest naturalisation period in this comparison — around five years of genuine residence.

From: €375,000
First permit: Not published; 6–12 months in practice
Tax regime: Remittance basis — but the permit gives no tax residence

The real number

What Malta actually costs

The threshold is the investment alone. Transfer taxes, professional and government fees and the first renewal are not optional — everyone pays them, every time.

Advertised: €375,000
Everything else: €126,000
Real, first year: €501,000

Sources Verified against primary sources on 23 August 2026 — statutes, ministry tariffs and official fee schedules. Figures are for ONE main applicant and cover entry and the first renewal; dependants are priced differently in every jurisdiction and are not included. Amounts in euro; the UAE threshold is AED 2,000,000 converted at 4.288 on the same date. See the working →

Who Malta's permanent residence programme suits

Malta is the shortest naturalisation period in this comparison — roughly five years — and since Portugal moved to seven and ten in May 2026 that is no longer a close call. It is also the only English-speaking EU member here, which matters more than it sounds when the paperwork, the schools and the lawyers are all in one language you already read.

It does not suit anybody comparing headline thresholds. The property is the smallest part of the bill.

What Malta costs beyond the €375,000 property

€375,000 buys the property. On top of it, none of it optional: a €37,000 government contribution, a €60,000 administrative fee for the main applicant, a €2,000 donation to a registered NGO, 5% stamp duty on the higher of price or market value, and €500 per residence card. A dependant adds €7,500 — a spouse, minor children and differently-abled adult children are exempt from it.

Leasing instead of buying is €14,000 a year and no stamp duty, but the contribution, the administrative fee and the donation are identical, and the lease has to run five years.

You must also show capital of €500,000 including €150,000 in financial assets, or €650,000 including €75,000, and hold the property and the assets for five years from the appointed day.

What changed in Maltese law, and when

Twice, recently, and both times upward. L.N. 310 of 2024 applied from 1 January 2025; L.N. 146 of 2025 followed on 22 July 2025. Between them the purchase floor went to €375,000 with the old discount for the south of Malta and Gozo abolished outright, the contribution became a flat €37,000 for buying and leasing alike, and the per-dependant contribution was replaced by the €7,500 fee.

Separately: citizenship by investment is closed. After the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled against it in April 2025, the scheme was replaced by naturalisation for merit — science, sport, culture, philanthropy — where payment alone does not qualify.

Renewing Maltese residence, and why it is not tax residence

Residency Malta publishes no processing time at all; the regulations allow eight months after the letter of approval in principle simply to complete the purchase and the payments, so six to twelve months end to end is the honest range.

The permit is immigration status and nothing else — it does not make you tax resident. If you separately become one, Malta taxes a non-domiciled resident on the remittance basis: foreign income taxed only when brought in, foreign capital gains never taxed even when brought in, with a €5,000 minimum tax where unremitted foreign income is €35,000 or more.

Sources: S.L. 217.26 under the Immigration Act as amended by L.N. 310 of 2024 and L.N. 146 of 2025; the MTCA guidance on the remittance basis; CJEU C-181/23.

Buying property here — Buying property in Malta: the permit, the 5% and the letting ban

Questions about Malta

What is a golden visa, exactly?: A residence permit granted because you placed a defined amount of money in the country — not because you have a job offer there, family there, or protection needs. That is the whole of the idea. It is not a passport and not a travel visa, and none of these five states calls it a golden visa in its own law: Portugal issues an ARI, Greece a residence permit for investment activity, Malta a permanent residence certificate, the UAE a ten-year golden residence. The marketing name is the market's, which is worth knowing before you read anyone else's page about it.
Where is the entry threshold lowest?: On the threshold alone, Greece — but only in a narrow case most buyers do not qualify for. Since 1 September 2024 Greece has three tiers: €800,000 across Attica, the Thessaloniki regional unit, Mykonos, Thira and islands above 3,100 people; €400,000 everywhere else; and €250,000 only by exception, for converting premises to residential use, rebuilding an industrial building idle five years, or fully restoring a listed one — with the works finished before you file. Otherwise: Malta €375,000 to buy or €14,000 a year to rent, the UAE AED 2,000,000 (about €490,000 at 4.08), Portugal €500,000 into a fund. For Cyprus we publish no figure: the threshold in its regulation 6(2) could not be established from any primary source.
Does the permit let me work anywhere in the EU?: No. An investment residence permit lets you live in the issuing country and travel freely in Schengen, but it carries no right to work in other EU states. Working in the issuing country itself is usually allowed; the conditions differ.
After how many years can I apply for citizenship?: Malta about five years by naturalisation, Greece seven, Cyprus eight, Portugal seven for EU and Portuguese-speaking nationals and ten for everyone else — that last figure changed in May 2026 and used to be five. The UAE has no citizenship route here at all. Everywhere the clock counts years of actual legal residence, not years of holding the status, so a permit that requires a few days a year accrues nothing on its own.
Do I have to live there to keep the status?: To keep the permit, almost nowhere: a few days a year is usually enough. For citizenship, yes — actual residence is required, and this is where expectations diverge most often.
Does buying property make me a tax resident?: No. Tax residence is decided by days of presence and centre of vital interests, not by ownership. Buying a house and remaining a tax resident of your own country is an ordinary situation.
Can I apply myself, without an adviser?: On Malta, no — and it is the only one of the five where that is a legal requirement rather than a practical one. Regulation 4(1) states that an individual making any application under the programme shall use the services of an agent, and the agent must be licensed; since the 2025 amendment they are licensed directly by the Agency. Everywhere else the choice is yours, and the practical answer differs from the legal one: a file that sits in a queue for two years is a file somebody has to chase.

Malta: guides and research

Best country to move to from the USA: the income each route asks for, and the two clocks that follow
The first page of results for this question is Reddit, a moving company, an expat tax service and three YouTube videos. Between them they will rank the weather. None of them states the number that decides whether an American is eligible at all: the monthly income each route requires, which differs between two neighbouring EU countries by a factor of nearly four.
Short-term rental rules in five jurisdictions: what a listing must show in 2026
Every jurisdiction this site covers now answers the same question in its own way: before a property can be advertised for short stays, it must carry a number issued by the state. Dubai calls it a holiday home permit, Portugal a registration in the RNAL, Greece an AMA, Cyprus a registration number, Malta a licence. From 20 May 2026 an EU regulation makes the number itself part of the listing across the four European jurisdictions, and makes the platform check it. This is what each one requires, who issues it, what it costs and what happens to the owner who skips it.
Living in Malta from the UK
Malta's attraction for British residents is usually described in one sentence: foreign income is taxed only if you bring it in. That sentence is about Maltese law, and Maltese law is only half the arrangement. The other half is article 23 of the UK-Malta convention of 1994, which limits the relief the United Kingdom gives to the part of the income Malta actually taxes. This page quotes both, with the dates each was read.
The cost of living in Malta: what the rent register says, and why nobody quotes it
Ask what it costs to live in Malta and the first page of results will give you figures between 782 and 2,205 euros a month for the same single person, none of them sourced. Malta happens to have something most countries do not: a register of every private residential lease actually signed since 2020. This page uses it, says what it does not cover, and names the one official statistic that is ten years old.
Malta citizenship by investment after the Court of Justice: what closed, and what stands in its place
Sixteen months after the Court of Justice ruled against it, the market still calls Malta's citizenship scheme suspended. It was not suspended. Its own regulations were amended: Part IV was deleted, together with the Second and Third Schedules, and the instrument was retitled. What replaced it grants citizenship on the basis of merit and publishes no price for it. Every step below carries the act, the gazette number and the date.
Malta residence permit and card: the eight-week wait, the weeks you cannot travel, and what it costs
Malta does not issue a TRC card. The document is the eResidence card, Identità issues it, and the part nobody writes down is what happens between applying and holding it: eight to ten weeks, during which the receipt in your hand is expressly not a travel document and cannot get you back into the country. The renewal window is narrower than most people assume, the fee depends entirely on the basis you applied under, and the portal withdraws applications on its own after sixty days.
Malta digital nomad visa: the income, the five months, and the wall at four years
Malta's nomad permit is the cheapest way into the country and the only Maltese route that counts your days rather than your money. It also ends. Four years is the maximum, the agency states in terms that it leads to no permanent residence and no citizenship, and it forbids you from earning anything at all from a company registered in Malta. Every one of those is published, and almost none of it appears in the pages selling the permit.
Golden passport: what a golden visa actually leads to, and how long it really takes
Golden passport is a phrase with no legal referent anywhere in these four jurisdictions. What each of them actually offers is a residence permit and a clock, and the clocks do not count what most people think they count. Three separate periods get collapsed into one in almost every comparison table: the permit's own renewal conditions, the presence test for long-term residence, and the naturalisation period. They are different lengths, they count different things, and only one of them ends in a passport.

We write when a rule changes in one of the five jurisdictions

Not a newsletter. A short email when a threshold, a tax or a requirement in one of these jurisdictions becomes something else — with the statute and the date. There will not be many: across 2026 there have been fewer than ten such changes across five countries. The confirmation brings the four routes compared on one printable sheet.

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