International cultural cooperation is led by the Ministry for Arts, Culture and the National Heritage in coordination with the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. The Foreign Ministry administers a Cultural Diplomacy Fund of approximately €200,000 per year (Financial Estimates 2026, LV 5624), supporting bilateral cultural exchanges, showcases and external representation. Arts Council Malta supports international engagement through dedicated funding instruments including the International Cultural Exchanges Scheme, the International Participation Scheme and the Mobility Guarantee Scheme (see 7.2.3). In 2025 and 2026, Arts Council Malta boosted support to international exchange through continued and increased participation in platforms including the Venice Biennale for visual arts, the London Design Biennale, the Gwangju Biennale, Berlin and Cannes film festivals, the London Book Fair, the Tunis Book Fair and the Edinburgh Fringe. National arts organisations like the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra maintain a significant touring programme, and in 2026 Arts Council Malta enabled access to the Eurimages audiovisual programme supported by the Council of Europe.Local-level cultural diplomacy is channelled chiefly through town-twinning programmes administered under the Local Government (Twinning) Regulations (S.L. 363.141), of which the Committee of the Regions Malta profile records 58 active twinning agreements concluded by Maltese local councils, predominantly with Italian and other Mediterranean municipalities.
Malta does not operate a stand-alone national cultural institute on the model of the British Council or Goethe-Institut. The 2011 National Cultural Policy proposed the establishment of a Maltese Cultural Institute to pool resources across the culture, education, tourism and foreign-affairs ministries; this institute has not been established as of May 2026. The Council for Maltese Living Abroad, constituted under the Council for Maltese Living Abroad Act (Cap. 512, 2011) and chaired by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, advises on diaspora cultural affairs and supports Maltese language and heritage outreach among Maltese communities overseas. Arts Council Malta has been a full member of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) network since 2015 and convenes the EUNIC Malta cluster bringing together European cultural institutes and embassies based in Malta.
Foreign cultural institutes maintain an active presence in Malta. The Alliance Française de Malte-Méditerranée, Istituto Italiano di Cultura Valletta, the German-Maltese Circle, and other European institutes deliver language teaching and cultural programming; the British Council scaled back its in-country operations after 2007 but continues partnership-based engagement. Non-European cultural diplomacy is anchored by the China Cultural Centre, which opened in Valletta in 2003 as the first such centre in the Mediterranean, and the Mariam Al-Batool Islamic Cultural Centre. Italy, France and the Council of Europe have funded major heritage restoration and cultural cooperation projects with Malta through bilateral and multilateral instruments.
Since Malta has become a very multicultural reality over the past 20 years, also partly due to its membership of the European Union (EU), many ethnic communities in Malta engage in cultural diplomacy exercises with Maltese institutions and groups, while Maltese entities acknowledge and cooperate with these different cultural representations through economic, social, educational and artistic means.
Bilateral cooperation operates through cultural cooperation agreements (e.g. recently a Malta–Kosovo Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2024 covering arts, heritage management, training and joint projects), film co-production treaties (with Canada since 1997, with China since 2015, and Malta’s participation in the Council of Europe Convention on Cinematographic Co-Production (revised, CETS 220)), and ad-hoc state-indemnity arrangements supporting major international art and heritage exhibitions hosted by Heritage Malta and MUŻA, in the absence of a formal State Indemnity Act.
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