Malta Sick Leave Rules 2026: What Employers Must Pay

Employees in Malta are entitled to at least two working weeks of paid sick leave a year, expressed in hours, where no Wage Regulation Order (WRO) covers their sector. For a standard 40-hour week that is 80 hours on full pay. The rule sits in the Minimum Special Leave Entitlement Regulations (S.L. 452.101), made under the Employment and Industrial Relations Act (Cap. 452).

Many employees are covered by a WRO instead. These sectoral orders set minimum conditions industry by industry, and each one sets its own sick leave entitlement. Where a WRO applies, the employer must follow it. Collective agreements and individual contracts can then add more on top, which is common in financial services, iGaming and technology companies competing for staff.

The entitlement is pro-rated in two situations:

• Part-time employees earn sick leave in proportion to their hours. Someone on 20 hours a week has 40 hours of paid sick leave a year under the default rule.
• Employees who join or leave during the year earn a proportion of the annual bank. A full-time employee starting on 1 July would have roughly 40 hours for the rest of 2026.

Recording the entitlement in hours rather than days avoids arguments when working patterns vary. A four-hour absence uses four hours of the bank, not a full day.

During statutory sick leave, an employer in Malta pays the employee’s full wage minus any sickness benefit the employee receives from the DSS for the same days. The employee should not end up with more than their normal pay, and the employer does not pay twice for benefit the state already covers.

In practice the employee applies for sickness benefit, and the employer deducts the benefit amount from the wage paid for those days. Payroll therefore needs to know which days were covered by a benefit claim and the rate that applied. The DSS publishes current sickness benefit rates on its site, and they change each year, so check the current rate with the DSS rather than relying on an older figure.

The offset only applies to days on which benefit is actually payable. If the DSS pays nothing for a particular day, the employer pays that day in full, so payroll should work from the benefit decision rather than an estimate.

Sick pay is part of the normal payroll. It goes through the Final Settlement System (FSS) like any other wage, with income tax withheld and Class 1 social security paid on the employee and employer side, then reported on the monthly FS5.

Yes. Paid sick leave in Malta is conditional on a medical certificate. The certificate confirms that the employee was unfit for work and covers the dates of the absence, and it is also what the employee uses to claim sickness benefit from the DSS.

As of 2026 we have found no general statutory right to self-certified sick leave for private-sector employees in Malta, so employers should not assume one exists. Some companies choose to allow a small number of self-certified days in their own policy. That is a contractual benefit, and the policy should say so clearly and set its limits.

A clear written sick leave policy helps both sides. It usually covers:

• How and by when the employee should report an absence on the first day.
• When the medical certificate must be sent, and to whom.
• Whether the company pays anything above the statutory or WRO minimum.
• How sick leave interacts with remote work, so an employee who is unfit is not expected to log on from home.
• How the remaining hours balance is shown to the employee.

The policy should sit alongside the written statement of terms that every employee must receive at the start of employment. Our guide to Malta employment contracts explains what that statement has to include.

When an employee in Malta has used up their paid sick leave, the employer’s statutory duty to pay wages for further sick days ends, and the employee may claim sickness benefit from the DSS. Any further pay from the employer depends on the contract, collective agreement or company policy.

The employment itself continues. Long illness is a sensitive area, and an employer considering ending employment because of prolonged absence should take advice first, because the dismissal would still need a good and sufficient cause and fair handling. Our article on terminating employment in Malta sets out the general rules on cause and notice.

Sickness also affects probation. In Malta, probation is suspended during absences of two weeks or more, including sickness, so the probation end date moves back by the length of the absence. HR teams should update the date in their records so a review is not missed or held too early.

Illness at the start of a period of annual leave is a common query. The safest approach is to agree a policy on whether certified sickness during booked leave converts those days to sick leave, and to apply it consistently.

Injury leave in Malta is separate from sick leave and more generous. An employee injured at work, or in the course of work, can receive up to one year of leave on full pay, less any injury benefit paid by the DSS. It does not use up the ordinary sick leave bank.

Workplace injuries also bring health and safety duties under the Occupational Health and Safety Authority Act (Cap. 424). For remote staff, agreeing home-working arrangements in writing makes it easier to show what counts as the course of work.

Urgent family leave is the other entitlement that touches sick leave. Since the 2025 change, employees have 32 hours a year (up from 15) for urgent family reasons, such as a sudden illness or accident affecting a family member. The first 16 hours are taken from annual leave, and the next 16 from sick leave. An employee who uses the full 32 hours therefore has 16 fewer hours of paid sick leave left for their own illness.

Payroll and HR systems should track the two balances separately, even though they draw on each other, so that the employee can see what remains of each.

Several other types of leave in Malta sit close to sick leave but are separate entitlements, and two of them are new for 2026. Treating them as sick leave would short-change the employee.

• Miscarriage leave: 7 working days on full pay for both parents after a loss before 22 weeks, in force from 1 January 2026.
• Special parental bereavement leave: 7 working days on full pay following the death of a child under 18, also from 1 January 2026.
• Carers’ leave: 5 working days a year, unpaid.
• Medically assisted procreation leave: 100 hours per couple, split 60/40, for up to three cycles.
• Maternity leave: 18 weeks, with weeks 1 to 14 paid by the employer (and refundable through the Maternity Leave Trust Fund) and weeks 15 to 18 paid by the DSS.

Budget 2026 also announced government-funded neonatal care leave. At the time of writing we have not confirmed its final duration or the legal notice that brings it in, so check the current position with DIER before building it into a policy.

Official guidance on each type of leave is published by the Department for Industrial and Employment Relations, which is the best place to confirm current rules.

An Employer of Record handles sick leave in Malta as part of payroll, tracking each employee’s hours balance, applying the benefit offset and filing everything through the FSS. With Employer of Record Malta, your team members are employed by our own Maltese company, and we check which WRO, if any, applies before their first day.

That covers the entitlement in the contract, the absence reporting process, certificate collection, the benefit deduction, injury leave and the separate balances for urgent family leave. If you want to offer more than the minimum, we write your enhanced sick pay terms into the contract and run them through payroll too.

For a clear view of what employment in Malta costs, including leave, see our guide to the cost of hiring in Malta, or ask our team about a specific role.