Can a short let in Malta take a booking longer than 90 days?

Explanatory rather than news. A short let licence in Malta cannot permit an individual booking longer than ninety consecutive days. What a longer stay becomes turns on whether the guest is still a tourist, because the Private Residential Leases Act defines that word, and where that Act applies the shortest lease available is one year unless the tenant fits one of four narrow categories.

A guest asks to stay four months. The rate is good, the flat is licensed, and the booking looks like any other. It is not, and the reason sits in two different instruments that ask two different questions: one about the length of the booking, and one about the person taking it. This is explanatory rather than news.

Can a short let in Malta take a booking longer than 90 days?

No. Since 15 June 2026, Annex 4, Category E of the Tourism Accommodation Regulations, S.L. 409.24, made by Legal Notice 92 of 2026, states that a short let licence shall not permit an individual booking exceeding ninety consecutive days. The limit is a condition of the licence rather than a tax rule or a platform policy, and it applies to the booking, not to the year.

That is the whole of what the regulations say about how long a stay may run. There is no separate annual cap on nights, and no minimum stay.

A longer stay is not automatically a residential lease

The Private Residential Leases Act, Cap. 604, is the other instrument, and the first thing it does is exclude most of what a short let operator does. Article 3(2) says the Act does not apply to tenements let to any tourist exclusively for tourism purposes. It carries a proviso that matters more than the exclusion does.

Read plainly, holding an MTA licence does not put a letting outside Cap. 604. It puts a letting outside Cap. 604 only while the occupant is a tourist. So the question stops being about the calendar and starts being about the person, and Cap. 604 defines the word rather than leaving it to ordinary usage.

Two things follow from that definition. A visitor on a long leisure stay is still a tourist at four months and at ten months, because the line in the definition is one consecutive year. A person who has taken up employment in Malta is not a tourist from the start, however short the stay, and the same goes for somebody establishing a business here.

If the guest is not a tourist, the shortest lease is a year

Where Cap. 604 applies, the letting becomes a private residential lease and the Act sets a floor on its duration. Article 8 does not merely prohibit a shorter term, it rewrites one.

An operator who signs a four month agreement with a non-tourist has not created a four month agreement. It is deemed to run for a year, unless the letting fits the one alternative the Act provides.

The four categories of short private residential lease

Article 2 defines a short private residential lease as a lease negotiated for a duration of six months, and it is available only where the tenant falls into one of four categories. The contract has to identify which one, with documentation.

• (a) Non-resident workers employed for a period less than six months, or only to complete a specific task within a maximum period of six months.
• (b) Non-resident students enrolled in courses for less than six months.
• (c) Residents who need to rent an alternative primary residence for a period of less than six months.
• (d) Non-residents who need to rent a tenement for a period of less than six months, provided they would not be seeking to establish their long residence in Malta.

The same definition closes off the obvious way round it: short private residential leases may not be extended. A tenant who stays on is not on a longer short lease. Category (a) is the one a short let operator meets most often, because it is the seasonal worker, the contractor and the person here to finish a job, and it is also the category whose occupant is not a tourist under the article 2 definition.

A residential lease has to be registered within 30 days, and an unregistered one is null

Registration is the step that catches operators who have only ever held an MTA licence, because it is a different obligation to a different authority. Article 4(2) of Cap. 604 puts thirty days on it and article 4(1) says what happens if it is missed.

The obligation is the lessor's, the Authority is the Housing Authority, and registration is made subject to an administrative fee levied by the Authority, with an additional fee where the registration is made later than the thirty days. Cap. 604 states neither amount, so we quote no figure here.

Seven things the contract has to contain

Article 6(1) lists seven essential requisites for a private residential lease contract: the tenement to be leased, the agreed use of it, the period of the letting, whether the lease may be extended and in what manner, the rent and how it is paid, any security deposit, and a signed inventory. Article 6(2) says that in the absence of one or more of them the agreement shall be null and void. The inventory is the one most often left out, and it is required even where the property is let unfurnished.

Where this leaves an operator

This section is our own reading rather than anything either authority has published. The useful habit is to ask the enquiry two questions before quoting a rate. How many consecutive nights, because past ninety the licence cannot carry the booking. And why they are coming, because a person taking up employment in Malta is not a tourist on the Cap. 604 definition, and a letting to them is a residential lease with a one year floor, a thirty day registration and seven mandatory contents, whatever the listing says. A seasonal worker on a four month contract is the case where both instruments bite at once, and it is the case worth being ready for, because the short private residential lease is the only route that fits and it cannot be extended afterwards.