The sign measure reaches existing licences, and that extension has not started yet

The MTA told Times of Malta on 20 July 2026 that the sign measure will be extended to licences issued before June, that the extension has yet to come into force, and that guidelines on the signs to be installed are being drafted. Standard 1.1.2 itself started on 15 June 2026 with the rest of the regulations.

Two different questions get answered as one, and they have different answers. What the sign has to say is in the legal notice and has been since April. When an operator has to put one up is not in the legal notice at all, and the only public answer to it came from an MTA spokesperson in a newspaper.

What the standard asks for

Sixth Schedule Standard 1.1.2 says a holiday premises must be clearly numbered or named with a sign fixed to the outside of the unit. In a block that means on or beside the entrance door of the unit itself. The sign carries four things.

The address

The address of the premises.

What it is

That the premises is licensed short-let rented accommodation.

The licence number

The official registration or licence number.

Somebody who answers

The name, surname and contact number of a named person available on a 24-hour basis to take complaints and deal with problems.

The standard sets what the sign says. It sets no format, no size and no material, and the legal notice mentions QR codes nowhere. Standard 1.2.2 asks separately for the 24-hour contact to be displayed inside the unit, and Annex 4 makes keeping that person's details current a condition of the licence.

The standard itself started on 15 June 2026

Standard 1.1.2 is not among the exceptions listed in regulation 1(2) of L.N. 92 of 2026, so it came into force with the body of the regulations on 15 June 2026. For a licence issued under the new regulations the sign is required now. What follows on this page is the separate question of licences that already existed before that date.

What the MTA said, and when

On 20 July 2026 Times of Malta reported an MTA spokesperson on which parts of the 2026 rules reach a licence that already existed. Several of the headline measures do not: the two-per-bedroom and ten-person occupancy caps, the ban on basement bedrooms, and the minimum bedroom sizes all attach to applications made from 15 June 2026, and a property licensed before that keeps its acquired rights through renewal, including its bed count.

The sign is on the other side of that line. In the same report:

and, of the same measure, that it "has yet to come into force". The report also says the MTA is drafting guidelines on the signs to be installed.

What that leaves an operator with today

If the licence was issued under the new regulations, the sign is already required and the four elements above are what it carries. If the licence predates 15 June 2026, what is coming is an extension the MTA has said has yet to come into force, whose format is being written now by the body that will inspect against it. In that case nobody can tell an operator their sign is signed off, because there is nothing yet to sign it off against. What an operator can do either way is have the four elements ready, correct and in one place, so that whatever the guidelines prescribe is a reprint rather than a scramble.

That is what our own sheet is for, and the layout on it is ours. We wrote it against the four elements above and it says so at the top. If the guidelines prescribe something different, we will change the sheet and say what changed on this page.

The rest of what L.N. 92 of 2026 requires, and which parts reach a licence issued before June, is on the guide to the 2026 rules. You can put the four elements on a sheet whenever you want to.

Correction, 3 September 2026

An earlier version of this article said, in its open block, that the commencement date for Sixth Schedule Standard 1.1.2 had not been published. That was wrong. Regulation 1(2) of L.N. 92 of 2026 publishes the commencement and lists the exceptions to it, and Standard 1.1.2 is not among them, so the standard came into force with the body of the regulations on 15 June 2026. The consolidated text was re-read on 27 August 2026 and this page was corrected on 3 September 2026.

The headline and the body of the earlier version were about the extension of the sign measure to licences issued before that date, which the MTA said on 20 July 2026 had yet to come into force. That remains the position. The section above has been retitled and rewritten so the two questions are not read as one, and the open block now names only what is genuinely unpublished.