Malta teaches in English by law. Check the college's licence before you pay a cent

Malta is the one country in the European Union where English is written into the constitution as an official language, and that single fact changes the maths for anyone who has studied in English all their life and doesn't want to spend a year and a test fee proving it. Many Maltese colleges will take a letter from your school or university confirming you were taught in English in place of an IELTS score. The degree is taught in English, the exams are set in English, and the paperwork for your flat arrives in English. Visagrad usually starts with Spain, and this week Malta gets the slot because it offers something Spain can't: an entire higher education system that runs in the language you already have.

The same low barrier has a cost that most agents leave out. Malta asks you to pay the college before you apply for the visa, and since 2024 its education regulator has revoked, frozen or publicly warned about a long list of private providers, including one that recruited heavily in South Asia and Africa. On 25 September 2026 it had to warn the public again that a university advertising a "Malta Campus" online holds no licence to operate there at all. Both things are true about Malta at once, and an honest guide has to deal with both.

Why is English official in Malta, and what does it change for you?

Article 5 of the Constitution of Malta names Maltese as the national language and names Maltese and English together as the official languages. That is a working arrangement, not a courtesy to visitors. Ministries publish in English, the courts operate in it, and the University of Malta teaches in it. Malta has been in the EU since 2004 and in the Schengen area since December 2007, so a Maltese student residence permit also lets you travel across the Schengen zone while you study, exactly as a Spanish or German one would.

For admissions, this means English is treated as a language you can already be educated in, so a test is often unnecessary. Many private licensed colleges accept a medium-of-instruction letter or strong Class 12 English marks. The University of Malta, the public university, is stricter and asks overseas applicants for a secure English language test, so the waiver is a feature of particular institutions, not a national rule. Get the requirement for your exact programme in writing before you plan around it.

What does a Maltese degree cost a non-EU student?

At the University of Malta, non-EU fees are set course by course, and most published figures fall between about 8,000 and 13,000 euros a year. Private colleges are often cheaper, which is part of their appeal and part of the risk this piece is about. On top of tuition, Malta's immigration agency, Identità, wants to see funds pegged at 60 percent of the higher of the annual national minimum wage or the poverty line, spread over the length of your course. The minimum wage for 2026 is 229.44 euros a week, about 994 euros a month, and in practice applicants are usually told to show somewhere around 9,000 to 10,000 euros for the first year.

Identità sets three conditions on the course itself. It must be full time, with at least 15 hours of study a week. It must sit at MQF Level 5 or above. And it must be run by an institution licensed by the Malta Further and Higher Education Authority, the MFHEA. Once you hold the permit, you can work up to 20 hours a week after your first 90 days in the country, with an employment licence issued through Jobsplus. That helps with rent. It won't pay the fees.

Why do you pay the college before you have a visa?

Proof that you have paid tuition, usually for at least the first semester or the first year depending on the institution, goes into the visa file. The MFHEA has published the thresholds consulates work to: for a course costing 2,500 euros or more, a receipt for up to half the fee. So the money leaves your account before anyone in Malta has decided whether you can come. If the visa is refused, everything depends on whether the college gives the money back, and how quickly.

The International European University case shows what that looks like when it goes wrong. IEU was a Ukrainian university given a temporary licence in 2023 to teach from Gżira, and complaints from international students piled up for two years. The MFHEA revoked the licence in August 2025 after an external quality audit. More than 80 foreign students then saw their residence permits cancelled along with their student status, and many of them, mostly from Pakistan, had put in savings of around 15,000 euros. Several said they hadn't been given the certified study records they needed to move to another college.

How many Maltese colleges have lost their licence?

More than most applicants would guess for a country this small. The MFHEA revoked the licence of the Valletta and Higher Education Institute from 1 July 2024, the Ledbury and Penn Institute of Studies in September 2024, and Malta City College in October 2024. ICOM Educational was barred from enrolling new students on 10 October 2024 and had its licence revoked on 6 December 2024. The MFHEA upheld that on internal appeal in August 2025, allowing a named list of students to sit resits until 31 October 2025, and on 6 May 2026 the Court of Appeal confirmed the revocation. A 2021 revocation of UCM was likewise confirmed in court in February 2025.

2026 has kept the regulator busy. In March it warned that the International Institute by Malta was advertising three bachelor's degrees, in tourism and hospitality management, health and social care management, and logistics and supply chain management, that weren't accredited and weren't on its licence. In April the European Center for Education in Business and Science was told to stop enrolling and advertising until a licence transfer was approved, and Up Your Level Academy got the same order in July. Then on 25 September came the IEU warning: a website still promoting a Malta campus, for an institution with no licence there. The University of Malta appears in none of these notices. The trouble sits in a tier of newer private providers, and those are the names that tend to reach applicants through recruitment agents across South Asia and Africa.

How do you check a Maltese college before you pay?

None of this takes specialist access. It takes an hour, and it has to happen before the first payment, because afterwards your leverage is gone.

• , Look up the institution on the MFHEA's public qualifications database and confirm its licence is current.
• , Confirm the exact programme title on your offer letter appears under that licence, at MQF Level 5 or above. A licensed college can still advertise a course it isn't licensed to run.
• , Check that the licence runs past your expected graduation date. IEU's was temporary and renewed a year at a time.
• , Search the institution's name on the MFHEA announcements page for enrolment bans and revocations.
• , If the course leads to a regulated profession such as medicine, nursing or teaching, ask the professional body. Accreditation by the MFHEA doesn't give you the right to practise.
• , Get the refund terms for a refused visa in writing, with a deadline in days.

That fifth point catches people who did everything else right. In June 2026 the MFHEA warned that a Master of Education in Primary Education was being marketed as leading to a teaching warrant when the Council for the Teaching Profession had not recognised it for that purpose. The programme was accredited. It just didn't lead where the advert said.

Can you stay in Malta after you graduate?

Yes, and this is better than many guides suggest. Malta grants a post-study residence permit for up to nine months from the date you complete your course, so you can look for a job or set up a business. You apply on form CEA N.03 to Identità's Expatriates Unit while your student permit is still valid, with a completion letter as proof that you finished. It is a one-off: it can't be renewed, and you can't get a second one after a later course. If you find a job, you switch to a single permit and the nine-month clock stops. If you don't, you are expected to leave when it runs out.

That completion letter is where the licence question comes back. The post-study permit depends on proof that you finished a course at a licensed institution, and a college that loses its licence halfway through your degree can leave you without one. Choosing the college carefully at the start decides whether those nine months exist for you at the end.

Malta suits a particular applicant well: someone educated in English who wants the language question settled, is comfortable with a small island and a small graduate job market, and is willing to check a college's licence before trusting its marketing. It suits nobody who picked a college only because it waived IELTS, without asking why it could.

Frequently asked questions

Fees, funds thresholds and permit conditions here reflect Maltese rules and published regulator notices as of October 2026. Licence status can change at short notice, so check the institution and the programme again in the week you pay, and confirm English requirements with the institution itself.