Malta’s Labour Party (PL) has won a record fourth consecutive term in government, preliminary results announced on May 31 showed.
The outcome handed a fresh mandate to Prime Minister Robert Abela, who had called the snap election a year early. Officials at the counting hall in Naxxar, central Malta, said early indications pointed to a comfortable Labour majority, although a narrower one than in 2022.
Abela, 48, said the result vindicated his decision to go to the polls. “This is a victory of all the people based on the programme we presented for all the people,” he told reporters, adding that his party had “won a strong mandate”.
He appealed for cohesion. “Let us maintain the spirit of national unity and move the country forward together,” he said.
The vote took place on May 30 across the Mediterranean island, the smallest and most densely populated country in the European Union, with around 550,000 people living in 316 square kilometres. Ballots were ferried overnight to the counting hall in Naxxar.
Turnout reached 87.4 per cent, slightly higher than at the previous general election in 2022, according to electoral officials. In that contest Labour took 55 per cent of the vote.
Abela had argued that the government needed a renewed mandate to shield the import-dependent island from geopolitical instability linked to the crisis in the Middle East. Malta’s economy grew 4 per cent last year, though there are concerns the conflict could hit tourism through rising aviation fuel costs and push up inflation.
His main rival was Nationalist Party (PN) candidate Alex Borg, a 30-year-old lawyer and former “Mr World Malta” winner who had urged voters to back change. Had he won, Borg would have become the country’s youngest leader.
Charles Bonello, the PN general secretary, conceded defeat in remarks to state broadcaster TVM, though he said the party had managed to cut back Labour’s majority.
Abela has led Malta since 2020, when his predecessor stepped down amid a political crisis over the 2017 assassination of reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had exposed high-level corruption.
A 2025 Council of Europe report found that Malta remained significantly behind in tackling corruption, although the issue barely featured on the campaign trail. The green party, the ADPD, again failed to make inroads; no third party has held a seat in Malta’s parliament since before independence in 1964.
