Malta erupts in rainbow revival as Colour My Run doubles turnout and paints capital bright again

Valletta’s historic Triton Fountain was already glowing amber in the early-morning light when the first cloud of neon-orange corn-starch exploded above the crowd. By 9 a.m. the usually traffic-clogged beltway between Floriana and Marsamxett had become a moving rainbow: parents pushing toddlers in strollers painted head-to-toe, university students in DIY “Għanja Malta” T-shirts, and silver-haired walkers sporting the event’s 2024 slogan “Bring Back the Colour” in Maltese, English and, for good measure, rainbow emojis. After a three-year pandemic hiatus, Colour My Run returned on Sunday with more than 5,000 registrations—double the 2019 figure—and a palpable sense that the island, too, was shaking off a grey coating.

“Malta spent two years talking about case numbers and travel lists,” said volunteer coordinator Maria Camilleri, 28, her face a patchwork of turquoise hand-prints. “Today we’re counting laughs per kilometre instead.” The 5-km untimed route was deliberately designed to weave past national landmarks—City Gate, the newly reopened MUŻA, the recently pedestrianised Strait Street—so that every colour station felt like a toast to a capital reborn. At the halfway mark, DJ Ġiġa spun 90s Maltese Eurodance while runners high-fived a phalanx of Heritage Malta re-enactors in Knights-period costume, now indistinguishable under a layer of fuchsia powder. The clash of epochs—Renaissance bastions versus UV-green fog—was pure Instagram candy, but organisers insist the concept runs deeper.

“Carnival is rooted in satire; festa fireworks are devotional,” explained Antoine Zahra, president of MoveMalta, the NGO behind the event. “Colour My Run occupies the middle ground: secular, inclusive, but still seasonal. It marks the unofficial start of Malta’s outdoor calendar—before beach clubs open, before village festi kick in.” Zahra, who also sits on the Valletta Cultural Agency board, sees the run as a soft re-introduction of physical activity to a population that Eurostat ranks as the EU’s most sedentary. “We can’t preach health at people. We have to gamify it.”

Local businesses, bruised by the collapse of cruise-ship footfall in 2020-22, embraced the colour economy. Pop-up stalls along Republic Street reported selling out of white T-shirts by 10 a.m.; one Sliema start-up shifted 400 pairs of neon sunglasses before runners had even crossed the start line. “Our turnover this weekend equals a normal month,” said Sarah Pace, co-owner of Glitch, a small fashion label that repurposes old PVC banners into bum-bags. She had hired six extra staff, all students from MCAST. “They’re learning that sustainability can be loud, messy and profitable.”

Perhaps the loudest cheers were reserved for the NGO village at the finish line, where 14 charities—from mental-health support group Richmond Foundation to migrant-led NGO Spark15—coloured participants’ hair in exchange for donations. Between them they raised just over €42,000, a record for a single-day sporting event on the island. “We wanted to prove that philanthropy doesn’t have to be black-tie,” said volunteer Miguel Herrera, who arrived in Malta on a humanitarian corridor from Venezuela in 2019 and now studies nursing. “Today I’m the one giving colour to Maltese people. That feels like integration in action.”

Critics argue the event generates plastic sachet waste; organisers counter that all colour powders are certified biodegradable and that a post-event clean-up crew of 120—many from the Scout Association—collected every discarded wrapper within three hours. WasteServ confirmed that 78 % of refuse will be composted or recycled, up from 62 % in 2019.

As the final DJ set faded and families boarded the extra 45 buses laid on by Malta Public Transport, a quiet rainbow film settled over the newly laid granite of Parliament Square. For a brief Sunday, the island’s habitual polarisations—north vs south, Labour vs Nationalist, local vs foreign—were smothered under a harmless layer of pink. “We needed this,” said 67-year-old Ninu Saliba from Żejtun, still dusting violet powder off his cap. “The country feels bright again.” In a place where politics and construction cranes colour every conversation, sometimes it takes a handful of vegetable starch to remind Maltese people that they can still choose their own palette.