Fact-check: Is it ‘unrealistic’ for Malta’s population to reach 800,000 by 2040?

Claim: Narratives of Malta’s population rising to 800,000 by 2040 are “not realistic”.

Verdict: At the current growth rate of 14,000 people each year, Malta's population will top 798,000 by the end of 2040.

Prime Minister Robert Abela on Sunday dismissed projections that Malta’s population could reach 800,000 by 2040 as “unrealistic,” saying Malta’s population growth had slowed since a Labour Migration Policy was introduced in 2024.

Abela was speaking to Times of Malta journalist Mark Laurence Zammit, who was questioning him about the sustainability of Malta’s growing population.

Abela said Malta’s population growth had slowed noticeably in recent years, with data showing that the population increased by 14,000 people in 2025.

“If we keep it at that level, or thereabouts, I believe the country can cope. So let’s not get into narratives of 800,000 by 2040 or whatever, they are not realistic,” he said.

Where did the 800,000 figure come from?

This figure had first risen to public prominence in the summer of 2023, when finance minister Clyde Caruana warned that Malta’s population would balloon to 800,000 by 2040 unless drastic changes to Malta’s economic model, which relied heavily on the importation of workers, were made.

At the time, Malta’s population stood at just over 542,000, according to official figures for the end of the previous year.

Caruana’s comments sparked widespread debate at the time, quickly becoming a lightning rod for concerns of overcrowding and Malta’s creaking infrastructure.

Has population growth really slowed?

It generally has, although how much of the slowdown can be attributed to the Labour Migration Policy, as argued by Abela, is unclear.

Figures published by the National Statistics Office on Thursday give a detailed account of Malta’s population change over the years, listing Malta’s current population at a little over 588,000.

The figures show that, in 2022 and 2023, Malta’s population grew by an average of 21,600 people each year, a rate similar to the period before the Covid-19 pandemic shut down global travel in 2020.

This number dipped sharply over the following two years, almost dropping by half.

In 2024, this number dropped to 10,800, before rising to the 14,000 mentioned by Abela last year.

However, this slowdown began well before the migration policy was first unveiled in early 2025.

And the policy did not formally come into force until several months later, with then-home affairs minister Byron Camilleri telling parliament in June 2025 that the policy would start being gradually implemented in the days to follow.

Months earlier, Camilleri had attributed the fall in migrant worker arrivals to other actions taken by the government, such as tighter restrictions on temping agencies and limits on the number of food couriers and cab drivers, rather than the policy itself.

Fewer TCNs arrive, but even fewer leave

Despite the broad slowdown in population growth, Malta’s net migration, the difference between people arriving in Malta and those leaving the country, did not shrink last year.

On the contrary, it increased slightly, by some 3,300 people, compared to the previous year, rising from 10,600 in 2024 to almost 14,000 in 2025.

The figures suggest that, rather than the number of people coming to Malta growing, this increase was driven by a dip in the number of people leaving the country.

In practice, fewer people are coming to Malta in the first place, but even fewer are leaving, the numbers show.

This is particularly true in the case of third-country nationals. While TCN arrivals dropped from 24,200 in 2024 to nearly 23,000 last year, the number of those who left the island dipped more sharply from 16,000 to 12,000.

800,000 by 2040?

Nevertheless, NSO’s figures would suggest that the prospect of Malta’s population reaching 800,000 by 2040 is nowhere near as far-fetched as Abela seems to suggest.

At the current rate of increase of 14,000 people per year, which Abela described as manageable if economic growth remains stable, Malta’s population would exceed 650,000 people by 2030.

It would eventually continue to climb over the subsequent decade, eventually reaching 798,000 by the end of 2040.

By the end of the following year, 2041, Malta’s population would top 812,000.

Even if Malta’s population were to increase at a slightly slower rate, by 10,000 people each year, the country’s population would rise to roughly 740,000 by 2040, before hitting the 800,000 mark a few years later.

Verdict

Malta’s population increased by 14,000 in 2025, a growth rate Abela described as manageable for the country.

If Malta’s population growth were to continue at the same rate over the coming years, the country’s population would reach just under 800,000 by 2040, in under 15 years’ time.

This would tally with the prediction, first made in 2023 by finance minister Clyde Caruana, that Malta’s population could reach 800,000 by 2040.

While only time will tell whether this comes to pass, the figures suggest that the prospect of Malta's population rising to 800,000 by 2040 is plausible.

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