Boat Tours & Day Cruises from Malta

Twenty-one well-reviewed boats leave Malta on a normal summer day and roughly nineteen of them are going to one place: the Blue Lagoon on Comino. The full-day shared cruises from Sliema Ferries start at $29 and run seven hours, of which two and a half are spent getting there and back. The short versions from the north of the island — $29 out of Mellieħa, $29 by catamaran — deliver the same lagoon in three to four hours because the crossing is twenty minutes instead of ninety.

The fact that catches most people out is not a price. Since the Malta Tourism Authority launched its Access Management System, everyone who steps ashore at the Blue Lagoon needs a free pre-booked landing pass from blcomino.com, in one of three slots — 08:00–13:00, 13:30–17:30 or 18:00–22:00 — and the QR code is exchanged for a wristband at a tent on the landing area. No ferry or tour company books it for you unless its listing says so. Stay aboard and swim off the boat and you need nothing.

If your only goal is to stand in that water, the public route is cheap and honest: a bus to Ċirkewwa, a Comino Ferries return crossing, and change from twenty euro. What it does not buy is a sea cave, a swim stop off Cominotto, shade, or a skipper who moves the anchorage when the majjistral gets up. The arithmetic is below.

Sliema Ferries is the busy one. The boats load from the promenade on The Strand, between the Fortina and the Marsamxett ferry terminus, and this is where the big shared cruisers sail from — the seven-hour Comino and Gozo day, the Gozo coastal loop, both round-Malta cruises. It is walkable from most of Sliema and St Julian's and it is the easiest pier to reach in Malta. The price of that convenience is distance: Sliema sits on the eastern side of the island, so the boat needs roughly ninety minutes each way to reach Comino. Three of your seven hours are transit.

Bugibba Jetty, in St Paul's Bay, is the north-coast alternative and a scheduled second pickup on several Sliema sailings. The catamaran and the top-rated coastline cruise both start here. From Bugibba the crossing is 45 minutes to an hour, so the same lagoon costs you an hour and a half less of sitting still.

Ċirkewwa Ferry Terminal, at the northern tip of the Marfa Ridge, is where the public boats live: Gozo Channel's car-and-passenger ferry to Mġarr, and the Comino Ferries and Ebsons boats to the Blue Lagoon. Marfa, the small landing a few minutes down the same road, runs the same Comino service. Neither is a tour — they drop you and leave. From here Comino is twenty minutes away, which is why the small-group tours that start in Mellieħa and Marfa can deliver a whole trip in three or four hours. Bus routes 41, 42, 101, 221, 222 and X1 all terminate at Ċirkewwa; Malta Public Transport's single fare is €2.00 in winter and €2.50 from mid-June to mid-October, valid two hours with a free transfer.

The Grand Harbour at Valletta sends out no Comino day boat at all, and that surprises people who booked a hotel in Valletta. What it does have is Lascaris Wharf, below the Upper Barrakka lift, where Gozo Highspeed's passenger catamaran runs to Mġarr on Gozo in about 45 minutes, and where the Three Cities ferry crosses to Cospicua. The Sliema ferry uses the Marsamxett side of the peninsula instead — a different waterfront, a five-minute walk apart at the top, twenty minutes apart at sea level. Mġarr Harbour on Gozo is the last piece: the private speedboats, and the half-day cruises for people already staying on Gozo, load there.

Under the MTA's Access Management System — launched as Book, Protect, Enjoy — anyone arriving by private or commercial vessel who intends to set foot ashore at the Blue Lagoon must pre-book a free slot at blcomino.com. There are three: 08:00–13:00, 13:30–17:30 and 18:00–22:00. The booking returns a QR code by email; officials at the coastal and land access points scan it and issue a wristband valid for that slot. The MTA's own notice states that access without a valid booking will not be permitted and that infringement may carry a fine.

The cap the system enforces is 4,000 people at the lagoon at any one time. The reason for it is not subtle: on peak days in recent summers the site was carrying figures in the region of 12,000. Bookings open two months out and take up to four people at a time, and in July and August the morning slot goes weeks ahead.

Three practical consequences follow. First, the pass is not a boat ticket, and no ferry company books it for you unless its listing explicitly says so — check the confirmation, and if it is silent, book the pass yourself. Second, it applies to landing, not swimming: if your boat anchors in the lagoon and you swim from the deck, as many of the shared cruises here do, you need nothing at all. Third, if you want the lagoon shore itself rather than the water, the slot you hold and the boat's timetable have to overlap, which is an argument for the short northern crossings over a seven-hour Sliema day whose arrival hour you do not control.

The shore itself has been changing. Deckchair and umbrella concessions were cut back sharply — reporting by The Shift News put the reduction at around 65%, with the stock moved to another part of the island, and the ferry landing area itself cleared of the rows that used to fill it. The wider overhaul of kiosks and concessions has been pushed back by at least a year while the MTA waits on a Planning Authority permit, so what you will find is a lagoon with fewer sunbeds than the older photographs show, kiosks still trading, and a wristband tent where the ramp meets the path.

Rain almost never cancels a boat in Malta. Wind does, and it has two names worth knowing. The majjistral is the northwesterly, the prevailing summer wind, and it typically gets up in the afternoon from June through September. It funnels straight down the channels between Malta, Comino and Gozo — the exact stretch of water every boat on this page has to cross — which is why morning departures sail more reliably than afternoon ones and why a lagoon that was glass at ten can be choppy at three. The grigal, the northeasterly, belongs to autumn and winter; it builds fast, pushes swell into the Comino channel from the open sea, and is the usual reason an October or November crossing is called off rather than merely uncomfortable.

The practical rule is that hull size buys you weather. A large Sliema cruiser will cross in conditions that keep a small speedboat at its mooring, and it is the fast small boats and the private hulls that get cancelled first. If the forecast is marginal and your trip is unmovable, book the big boat. If you have the flexibility, book the morning.

Season matters for the public route too: the Comino Ferries service from Ċirkewwa and Marfa is effectively a summer operation, roughly June to September, while Gozo Channel's Ċirkewwa–Mġarr ferry runs every day of the year around the clock. Out of season, Comino means a private charter or nothing.