Robert Abela declared large tourist numbers "crucial" for Malta even as pickp…

Tourist guides report increased targeting at Upper Barrakka Gardens and other hotspots.

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Overview

Robert Abela declared large tourist numbers "crucial" for Malta even as pickpocketing gangs target visitors across Valletta's main attractions.

The Prime Minister's timing feels deliberate — defend the model while acknowledging its newest side effect.

Tourist guides report increased targeting at Upper Barrakka Gardens and other hotspots.

This is the mathematics of mass tourism: more bodies, more opportunities, more problems.

Malta invited the world and the world's pickpockets accepted.

Robert Abela declared large tourist numbers "crucial" for Malta even as pickpocketing gangs target visitors across Valletta's main attractions. The Prime Minister's timing feels deliberate — defend the model while acknowledging its newest side effect.

Tourist guides report increased targeting at Upper Barrakka Gardens and other hotspots. Police are investigating multiple cases. This is the mathematics of mass tourism: more bodies, more opportunities, more problems. Malta invited the world and the world's pickpockets accepted.

Meanwhile, a former police sergeant received five years for an overtime fraud that "rocked" the traffic section. The detail worth noting: this happened in traffic police, the unit that manages Malta's increasingly congested roads as tourist rental cars multiply each season. The sergeant found a way to extract money from a system already straining under numbers Abela calls essential.

The courts ordered government entity INDIS to pay €533,360 to a scientist for an environmental report on the now-shelved Luqa dump regeneration project. Another ambitious project abandoned, another bill paid quietly. This is how Malta operates: commission studies, shelve plans, pay anyway.

Birżebbuġa swimmers should stay out of the water due to a sewage leak. The Environmental Health Directorate issued the warning for a "popular spot" — though popularity means less when the sea becomes a health hazard. Infrastructure buckling under pressure again.

One bright note: Lionel Richie will perform in Malta this August. Ninety million records sold, one seated concert experience planned. At least someone still believes Malta can host large numbers without everything falling apart.

The university named five new pro-rectors under incoming rector Frank Bezzina. Academic life continues its quiet reorganisation while the island debates whether it can handle the crowds it needs to survive.

This is Malta in June 2026: defending the model while managing its consequences, one leak at a time.

Editor's Note

They always speak of tourism like weather — something that just happens to us, never something we chose.

— Sophia Borg

Gabriel Fenech

Senior Correspondent, Malta

Gabriel Fenech has covered Malta for four decades. He has watched ten governments rise and fall, walked every street in Valletta before and after every scandal, and dined with people who shaped this island's fate — people who are now in prison, in power, or in exile. He quotes Márquez without trying. He is the most curious person in any room and the quietest about it. There is something he has never written. He never will.

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Edited by Ilhan Irem Yuce · Chief Editor, News Beast