2 schemes in 2 cities. Every figure comes from an official source and is re-checked.
Malta has 2 driving restrictions that we have checked against an official source, in 2 cities. They are 1 limited traffic zone and 1 congestion charge.
This page lists no country-wide requirement for Malta. Anything owed before you reach a city is not covered here, so check the national road authority before you leave.
The sources for this country were read on 2026-09-15, from the authorities' own pages. Each check is repeated on a schedule, and a rule we can no longer confirm comes down instead of staying up.
| Scheme | City | Kind | Daily charge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations, S.L. 65.27 | Mdina | Limited traffic zone | not in our sources |
| Valletta charging zone — Vehicle Access Zones (Control) Regulations, S.L. 65.31 | Valletta | Congestion charge | €6.52 |
The shortest restriction in this corpus, and one of the strictest.
Regulation 2 of the Mdina (Restriction of Access and Transit of Vehicles) Regulations, in force since 13 July 2004, reads in full: 'No vehicle, other than karrozzin, shall have access to any street or square inside Mdina nor circulate within that city at any time.' There is no charge, no permit you can buy at the gate, no emission test, no weight test and no hour at which the ban lifts — the exception the legislator wrote into the sentence itself is the karrozzin, the horse-drawn cab that has worked the old capital for generations.
Everything else that may enter is in a list of five paragraphs. Residents' own vehicles, ambulances, fire-fighting and police vehicles, hearses with one funeral car, bridal cars, and a doctor's car on a call inside Mdina have complete access at all times. Commercial vehicles delivering or selling goods may circulate for that purpose between 06.00 and 10.30 and between 15.30 and 17.00, every day.
Mini-buses hired to carry children to schools inside Mdina may circulate between 07.30 and 09.00 and between 13.00 and 14.00 on schooldays. Taxis and chauffeur-driven cars may come in and out, without parking, to carry residents to and from hotels and residences.
And a vehicle displaying a Blue Sticker — the disability sign issued by Malta's National Commission Persons with Disability, or any internationally recognised equivalent — may circulate at all times and park in specific reserved areas, whatever the nationality of its owner.
Anything else needs a temporary permit from the Mdina Local Council, applied for in writing on a form printed in the regulations themselves, for a stated reason and a stated period, on payment of a 2.33 euro administration fee.
The permit is signed by the Mayor and the Executive Secretary, must be displayed inside the vehicle so that it can be read from outside, lasts no more than twelve months and cannot be transferred to another person or another vehicle. For a visitor the practical consequence is simple and worth knowing before the drive rather than at the gate: you park outside the walls and walk in.
Malta enters this corpus on a charge that is metered by the hour rather than sold by the day, and on a national framework that has designated exactly one city in nineteen years.
The Vehicle Access Zones (Control) Regulations, subsidiary legislation 65.31 under the Traffic Regulation Ordinance, came into force on 1 May 2007 and let the Authority for Transport in Malta establish 'one or more charging zones within any Council locality'. The First Schedule has always listed one: VALLETTA, Monday to Friday 08.00 to 18.00.
Access is read by camera — the regulations call the installation a 'Vehicular Access Control System', operated under contract to the Authority — and what it produces is an invoice, not a fine. The meter is unusual enough that a driver who assumes a London-style day charge will get it wrong in both directions. The first thirty minutes inside the zone are free.
Between thirty and sixty minutes the charge is 82 cents flat. After an hour it is 82 cents for each hour or part of an hour, and it stops at 6.52 euro for the day. Enter after 14.00 and leave before 08.00 the next morning and there is no charge at all; enter in the last thirty minutes before 18.00 and stay until 18.00 and there is no charge either; and a public holiday that falls on a charging weekday is free.
Nothing here asks what the engine is in the sense a low emission zone does — there is no Euro class, no fuel ban, no windscreen label and no vehicle age anywhere in the instrument — but the exemption list does reach the powertrain once, and in the driver's favour: electric and hybrid vehicles are exempt from the charge outright, as are motorcycles, buses and anything registered to carry more than eight passengers besides the driver.
The largest exemption is not a vehicle type at all but a residence test: a 'non-chargeable vehicle' is one kept in a garage or parked on a street inside the locality at night for at least fifteen nights a month and at least seven months a year, which is how Valletta's own residents fall out of the scheme. Not paying is not an offence and carries no penalty charge notice.
It is a debt that follows the vehicle: the charge rises by 2 per cent or 5.82 euro after thirty days, by another 2 per cent after sixty, and doubles after ninety, and until it is settled the Authority will not renew that vehicle's road licence, register its transfer, or allow it to be scrapped or garaged. What the regulations do make an offence is obscuring the number plate, at up to 1,164.69 euro.
One more instrument overlaps this one and a visitor should know it exists: the Valletta Pedestrian Zones Regulations, S.L. 499.54, prohibit vehicles from proceeding or waiting in a schedule of named streets and squares inside the city, with bollards at each end — no charge will buy you in there.
Charge €6.52