# Malta — records retrieval dossier

> EasyPassport knowledge base for citizenship-by-descent record retrieval. **General
> guidance to confirm on the official pages listed under Sources — not legal
> advice.** Fees, URLs, offices, and processing times change; verify before quoting.

## Vital records (birth / marriage / death)

- **Holding office:** The Public Registry, operated by Identità Agency (Civil Status Section). Current civil-status counters: Malta Public Registry — Civil Status & Customer Care Section, Aldo Moro Road, Marsa; and Gozo Public Registry, Floor 1, Tower Building, Fortunato Mizzi Street, Victoria, Gozo. (An older/registered address is Evans Building, Merchants Street, Valletta VLT 2000.) The Registry records births, marriages, civil unions and deaths — both those occurring in Malta and, via the Marriage Registry, those of Maltese nationals abroad.
- **How to request:** Three channels: (1) ONLINE at the Ċertifikati portal — certificates are posted worldwide or collected in Marsa/Victoria; (2) IN PERSON at the Marsa or Gozo counters; (3) BY POST for orders exceeding €20, using the downloadable order form. Contact: publicregistry.identita@gov.mt or pubreg.civilstatus@gov.mt, tel +356 2590 4200 (Gozo local notifications +356 2590 4614/4615). IMPORTANT for a descent claim: since 16 April 2010 the Community Malta Agency itself obtains the Malta-registered civil certificates on the applicant's behalf, so for records held by the Public Registry you supply accurate identifying details rather than pre-ordering the certificates.
- **Online portal:** https://certifikati.identita.gov.mt
- **Who may request:** Maltese civil-status certificates are public records — anyone may order a birth/marriage/death certificate (no descendant-only restriction and no privacy-year cutoff stated). For the citizenship application itself, the Community Malta Agency pulls the Malta-held certificates for you; the applicant only needs to independently obtain records the Public Registry does NOT hold (foreign-issued records and pre-1863 ecclesiastical records).
- **Cost:** Ordered online: extract certificate €2.50 each, full certificate €9.95 each. Purchased in person or by post: extract €2.60, full €10.25. For a descent claim always obtain the FULL certificate — it shows parentage/filiation; the cheap extract omits the parent data needed to prove the generational link.
- **Timeline:** The Civil Status Section processes certificate orders within six (6) working days of submission; add international postal time on top if delivered by mail.
- **Language:** English or Maltese — the Registry and the Ċertifikati portal are bilingual and certificates issue in English/Maltese. Multilingual standard forms (EU Reg. 2016/1191 translation aids) are available for cross-border EU use.
- **Notes:** Civil registration in Malta began in 1863; the Public Registry was organised in 1889 and holds records from 1863 onward. Vital registration is considered comprehensive. Anything before 1863 exists only as Roman Catholic parish records. There are NO separate divorce records — divorce is annotated onto the marriage certificate.

## Historical & church records (before civil registration)

- **Parish / church:** For the pre-1863 (pre-civil-registration) era, Roman Catholic parish registers are the primary source — baptisms, marriages and burials from about 1537 to the present, plus Status Animarum (parish census) surveys; ~95%+ of Maltese were Catholic. Recent registers stay in the LOCAL parish; older registers are held at the Cathedral Museum, Archbishop Square, Mdina; the Archbishop's Curia, St Calcedonius Square, Floriana (Archives of the Archbishop of Malta, archives.maltadiocese.org); the Diocese of Gozo (gozodiocese.org); or the National Library, Valletta. The Malta Parish Archives Project (HMML Malta Study Center, maltaparisharchives.org) has microfilmed/scanned parish registers; the Adami Collection (1485–1868) is transcribed on FamilySearch. Anglican registers (~5% of the population) run from ~1801 (St Paul's Pro-Cathedral, Valletta; Anglican chaplaincy, Sliema). For a descent claim, Community Malta accepts ecclesiastical certificates only where the Public Registry has no record.
- **National / state archive:** National Archives of Malta (arkivji.org.mt), principal genealogical seat at Santo Spirito, Rabat, with an online AtoM catalogue at arkivji.org.mt/atom2 (includes digitised passport applications). Also: National Library of Malta / Bibliotheca, 36 Old Treasury Street, Valletta (customercare.nlm@gov.mt); and the Notarial Archives, Valletta, for wills/legacies. Many Maltese registers were microfilmed by FamilySearch (searchable in its catalogue) and indexed at Geneanum.com.
- **Notes:** Older records are written in Latin or Italian (saint/town names Italianised), so a Latin word list and awareness of spelling variants are essential. Identifying the ancestor's exact town/parish of origin is the key to locating the right register, since records are organised parish-by-parish.

## Apostille / legalization

- **Competent authority:** Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs (Legalisation Unit) — this is Malta's HCCH-designated Article 6 Competent Authority for apostilles. Address: 18 Zachary Street, Valletta VLT 1133 (contact person listed by the HCCH: Kenneth Burnell; consular.foreign@gov.mt; tel +356 2204 0000).
- **URL:** https://consularplus.gov.mt/legalisation
- **Process:** Documents are apostillised/legalised through the Ministry's Legalisation Unit via the ConsularPlus service, which offers a walk-in service and a drop-box service (details on consularplus.gov.mt/legalisation). The Register of signatories/professionals whose signatures the Ministry can authenticate is searchable at https://signatories-legalisation.gov.mt/. Note the direction of the apostille (see notes) — in a Maltese descent case the Malta Ministry apostillises Maltese-issued documents, but the documents that actually need apostilles are usually the applicant's FOREIGN records, apostillised by the issuing country.
- **Cost:** Per the HCCH schedule: EUR 12 per document (non-commercial) or EUR 20 (commercial).
- **Notes:** Malta IS a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention (in force). Two critical nuances: (1) Under EU Regulation 2016/1191, Maltese public documents (birth/marriage/death, etc.) presented to another EU member state — and EU-issued documents presented to Malta — do NOT need an apostille at all; a multilingual standard form is used instead. (2) In a descent application the burden falls on NON-EU / foreign documents: the applicant's own foreign birth certificate and the emigrant generation's foreign-issued records must be apostilled by the COMPETENT AUTHORITY OF THE ISSUING COUNTRY, not by Malta.

> **Apostille authority — verification (✓ confirmed against HCCH, 2026-07):** No corrections — the researched authority holds.

## Translation

- **Requirement:** All documents submitted to Identità/Community Malta must be in English or Maltese. Public documents from a third (non-EU) country that are partially or entirely not in English must be translated into English or Maltese. EU-member documents accompanied by an EU multilingual standard form do not need a separate translation; if fields are completed in another language, those fields must be translated.
- **Notes:** Whether the translation itself must be apostilled depends on who translated it (per Identità's 15 May 2023 'Policy for the Recognition of Foreign Public Documents', v2.0): translations done IN MALTA by a translator on the Identità Translators List do NOT need an apostille; translations by a translator registered with the Ministry for Foreign & European Affairs but NOT on the Identità list MUST be apostilled/legalised; translations done in another EU state by a translator verifiable on the EU e-Justice portal are accepted without apostille; ALL translations of non-EU documents done outside Malta or the EU must be apostilled or fully legalised. The Identità Translators List is at identita.gov.mt/public-registry-sec-page-translators-list/ and the Ministry's signatory register at signatories-legalisation.gov.mt.

## Emigration & naturalization (the chain-break)

- **Emigrant / exit records:** Malta's own emigration/exit records include: passport applications (indexed collections 1815–1934, 1865–1943, 1907–1988; passport records 1916–1990), Customs Department registers/passports 1535–1967, arrivals-by-aircraft 1946–1957 and visa indexes 1970–1977 — held by the National Archives of Malta (digitised passport applications browsable in its AtoM catalogue, arkivji.org.mt/atom2) and microfilmed by FamilySearch. Post-WWII emigrants were assisted by Malta's Emigration Department (assisted-passage scheme, ~140,000 people 1946–late 1970s) and the Malta Emigrants Commission (est. 1950). Outbound UK passenger lists (1890–1960, Ancestry/Findmypast) capture those who sailed via Britain.
- **Destination naturalization:** This is the decisive chain-break check for Malta. Look for the ancestor's naturalization in the destination country — most Maltese emigrated to Australia (~57.6% of assisted emigrants), the UK (~22%), Canada (~13%) and the USA (~7%), with earlier 19th-c. communities in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt. WHY THE TIMING IS DECISIVE FOR MALTA: before 10 February 2000, a Maltese citizen who VOLUNTARILY acquired a foreign citizenship AUTOMATICALLY lost Maltese citizenship (and before 1 August 1989 dual citizenship was not permitted at all). So if a Malta-born ascendant naturalized abroad BEFORE the birth of the child through whom you claim, the descent chain can be broken. Confirm the exact date of the foreign naturalization relative to each descendant's birth. (Some who lost citizenship by birth/descent automatically re-acquired it under the 2000 amendments if they had lived abroad ≥6 years.)
- **Notes:** Malta became independent only on 21 September 1964 — before that Maltese were 'citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies' / British subjects, so 'Maltese citizenship' as a distinct status exists only from 1964. For an ancestor who emigrated to the UK or a Commonwealth country, pre-1 -October-1986 UK naturalisation records are at The National Archives (Kew). Also note the statutory rule that Maltese citizenship acquired BY REGISTRATION on the basis of descent is not automatically transmitted to the next generation — each generation must register in its own right.

## Gotchas

- The Agency fetches Maltese certificates for you: since 16 April 2010 Community Malta obtains the Malta-registered civil-status certificates on the applicant's behalf, so don't waste money pre-ordering them — you mainly supply accurate names/dates. You DO still have to obtain, translate and apostille the FOREIGN-issued records and any pre-1863 ecclesiastical certificates the Public Registry doesn't hold.
- Pre-2000 automatic loss of citizenship is the classic chain-breaker: before 10 Feb 2000 a Maltese who voluntarily naturalized abroad lost Maltese citizenship automatically (no dual citizenship at all before 1 Aug 1989). An emigrant ancestor naturalizing (e.g. Australian/Canadian/US) before the next generation's birth can sever the descent chain — the date of foreign naturalization vs. each descendant's birth is what matters.
- Registration-by-descent does not pass down automatically: statute says Maltese citizenship acquired by registration on the basis of descent is NOT transmitted to that person's child. Each generation must register separately, which is why the Form K route demands the Malta-born ascendant's registration certificate (plus death certificate if deceased) for third-and-later generations.
- Order the FULL certificate, not the extract: the cheaper extract (€2.50) omits parentage; only the full certificate (€9.95) shows the parent/filiation data needed to prove the generational link.
- Apostille-direction confusion: Maltese-issued documents are apostillised by Malta's Ministry for Foreign & European Affairs — but within the EU they need no apostille at all (Reg. 2016/1191). The apostilles you actually need go on your NON-Maltese documents and must be issued by the foreign country that produced them, not by Malta.
- Name and language drift in old records: pre-1863 registers are in Latin/Italian with Italianised given names, saint names and town names; Maltese surnames often appear in variant spellings, so the name on an emigration-country document frequently will not match the Maltese parish/civil record letter-for-letter.

## Sources

- [HCCH — Malta Competent (Apostille) Authority, Art. 6 (Ministry for Foreign and European Affairs, incl. EUR 12/20 fees)](https://www.hcch.net/en/states/authorities/details3/?aid=332)
- [Identità — Public Registry, Civil Status (channels, prices, 6-working-day timeline, portal)](https://identita.gov.mt/public-registry-sec-page-civil-status/)
- [Identità Ċertifikati — online civil-status certificate portal](https://certifikati.identita.gov.mt)
- [Identità — Policy for the Recognition of Foreign Public Documents v2.0 (apostille/legalisation + translation rules)](https://identita.gov.mt/public-registry-sec-page-policy-for-the-recognition-of-foreign-public-documents/)
- [Community Malta Agency (Aġenzija Komunità Malta) — Acquisition of Citizenship (Form K/M descent route, documents, dual-citizenship loss history, Agency obtains certs since 16 Apr 2010)](https://komunita.gov.mt/en/services/acquisition-of-citizenship/)
- [Community Malta Agency — Form K (registration as descendant of an ascendant born in Malta of a parent likewise born in Malta)](https://komunita.gov.mt/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Form-K.pdf)
- [Ministry for Foreign & European Affairs — ConsularPlus Legalisation of Documents (walk-in/drop-box apostille service)](https://consularplus.gov.mt/legalisation)
- [Malta Legalisation Unit — signatory/professional register](https://signatories-legalisation.gov.mt/)
- [FamilySearch Wiki — Malta Civil Registration (1863 start, Public Registry office, record contents)](https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Malta_Civil_Registration)
- [FamilySearch Wiki — Malta Church Records (RC registers 1537+, Curia/Cathedral Museum/National Library, Adami Collection, Anglican)](https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Malta_Church_Records)
- [FamilySearch Wiki — Malta Emigration and Immigration (passport applications, National Archives AtoM, destinations, British-subject status)](https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Malta_Emigration_and_Immigration)
- [Malta Parish Archives Project (HMML Malta Study Center) — microfilmed parish registers catalogue](https://www.maltaparisharchives.org/catalog)
- [National Archives of Malta — AtoM online catalogue (digitised passport applications)](https://arkivji.org.mt/atom2/)

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General guidance, not legal advice. EasyPassport is a document-organization tool, not a law firm. Confirm your own case with the relevant authority or a qualified professional.