Growing Cannabis at Home in Malta: The Four-Plant Rules

"Irrespective of the number of residents": those five words in article 7 of Chapter 537 decide more home grows than any other. Nothing in the article allows more than four plants at an address, whoever lives there and whatever the strains. A flat with three adults gets the same four plants as a flat with one.

That is the first of several rules home growers in Malta get wrong. The rest concern where the plants stand, who can see or smell them, and what happens when a harvest pushes you past 50 grams. For the association route instead, see our Malta associations explainer.

Minimum age

18

Plants

Up to 4 per residential address

Dried cannabis at home

Up to 50 g

Where

Only the residential address on your ID card or residence document

Conditions

Not visible to the public, no odor nuisance, not visible or accessible to minors

Seeds

Up to 20 a month from your association

Fines for getting the setup wrong

The 2025 amendments to Chapter 537 turned the home-grow conditions into specific penalties. They are imposed by a Commissioner for Justice, not a criminal court, and for the two grow breaches police or a regulator may seize and confiscate the plants.

What happens if police find cannabis at your home

Police may seize dried cannabis at the address only if it exceeds 50 grams. If they seize it and it turns out to be within the limit, the law says they must send it to ARUC, or another authority the minister names, to be returned to the owner. A weighing done carelessly in the field is therefore not the end of the story, though a record of your own harvest weights helps.

Where seeds come from

Associations may give each member up to 20 unsterilized seeds a month in sealed packets, under article 7A of the same law. That is the route the law itself provides. According to CSB Group's 2021 legal summary, seeds were left out of Malta's legal definition of cannabis, so seed sales are not treated like flower sales; we did not re-check that definition against the 2025 amendments.

Setting up a grow that stays inside the rules

1. Check your registered address
   It must be the residence on your ID card or residence document. A garage, farmhouse or relative's flat elsewhere is the €700–€1,000 breach.
2. Pick a space nobody can see into
   Balconies and roofs overlooked by neighbors or the street fail the visibility test.
3. Control the smell
   Odor that bothers third parties breaks the grow conditions and can trigger complaints to the free odor hotline, Filter reported.
4. Lock it away from children
   Plants must not be visible or accessible to minors; store dried cannabis the same way.
5. Weigh the harvest
   Four plants can easily yield more than 50 g dried; anything above that is outside the protection. Plan plant numbers with that ceiling in mind.

Renters and shared flats: where the law bites hardest

The smell and visibility rules land unevenly. Filter reported that the 2025 changes will fall hardest on tenants who cannot control communal airflow, and activist Karen Mamo, a former ARUC employee, put it this way:

We're back to punishing plants and people instead of fixing the real problems.

Karen Mamo, via Filter (2025)

If you rent, the tenancy contract may also restrict growing even where the criminal law allows it; that is a civil matter between you and the landlord. For the national rules at a glance, see the Malta hub.