Malta's towns and villages, with their populations

Malta has no counties or regions in the British sense. Below national government there’s just one tier, the 68 local councils, which match the 68 localities used in official statistics. There are 54 on the island of Malta and 14 on Gozo and Comino. This page maps every one of them with its population, and I use it myself to understand where people live and where tourism concentrates.

Six districts to make sense of 68 towns

The NSO, Malta’s statistics office, groups the localities into six districts. Five are on the main island, Southern Harbour, Northern Harbour, South Eastern, Western and Northern, and the sixth is Gozo with Comino. The figures say a lot. Northern Harbour, which takes in Sliema, St Julian’s, Birkirkara and Msida, has 188,162 residents at 7,836 per square kilometre. The Western district, with Mdina, Rabat and Dingli, drops to 975. Gozo and Comino, to 609.

For a visitor that translates into something practical. If you want services, restaurants and transport at all hours, go for Northern Harbour. If you want history, Southern Harbour, with Valletta and the Three Cities. If you’re after countryside and quiet, the Western district or Gozo. Bear in mind that the NSO district doesn’t always match the administrative region. Iklin, for instance, counts as Western for the NSO, yet its council places it in the Eastern Region.

What is the largest town in Malta?

It isn’t the capital. The most populous locality is St Paul’s Bay, San Pawl il-Baħar in Maltese, with 43,095 residents at the end of 2025. It takes in Buġibba and Qawra, grew fastest of all, 7.2% in a single year, and has the most foreign residents, 28,045, or 65% of the total. I cover it in St Paul’s Bay. Behind it come Birkirkara, with 30,166, Mosta, with 25,845, and Sliema, with 23,570.

Valletta, by contrast, has 5,189 residents and is losing them, down from 5,635 in 2012. That doesn’t surprise me, since there’s no room to grow inside 16th-century walls. Everything worth seeing there is in Valletta.

The smallest and the most crammed

The council with the fewest residents is Mdina, with 201, the same figure as in 2024. Next, on Gozo, comes Għasri, with 519, which is also the least densely populated place in the country, at 104 people per square kilometre. At the other extreme is Senglea, known locally as Isla, with 15,060 people per square kilometre on a point of land in the Grand Harbour. The national totals, and how they’ve grown since 2012, are in Malta’s population.

If you’re after the villages that are worth visiting for their looks rather than their size, my ranking is in the prettiest villages in Malta.

A country with new neighbours

The figure on this list that made me stop and think is the one about foreign residents. In 2025, six localities had more foreign nationals than Maltese, namely Sliema, St Julian’s, Msida, Gżira, Pietà and St Paul’s Bay. In Sliema, for instance, it was 13,234 to 10,336. Across the country foreign nationals make up 31.1%, when in 2012 they numbered just 23,365. That’s a huge shift in thirteen years, and to me it’s the single number that best explains Malta today.

Gozo, fourteen villages in 67 km²

Gozo’s fourteen councils are small, and none reaches 8,000 people. The capital, Victoria, which Gozitans call Rabat, is the largest with 7,671. Then come Xagħra, 5,386, and Nadur, 4,696. Comino has no council of its own and is grouped with Għajnsielem, the village around Mġarr harbour, the two sharing 3,832 residents. The whole of Gozo and Comino has 41,793 people, fewer than St Paul’s Bay alone. I take it more slowly in my guide to Gozo.

Reading Maltese place names

One last practical tip. The NSO writes place names in Maltese with the article, such as Il-Birgu, L-Isla, Ħal Tarxien or Iż-Żurrieq, and Malta Public Transport uses Maltese on its routes too, with stops such as ‘Ħal Luqa (Airport)’ and destinations like ‘Ajruport’. Some also have an Italian or English name, like Vittoriosa for Birgu, Senglea for Isla or St Paul’s Bay for San Pawl il-Baħar. Letters such as ħ, ġ and ż belong to the Maltese alphabet, and it’s worth recognising them so you don’t miss your stop. In this guide I use the English form where it’s the common one, with the Maltese in brackets the first time.