VALLETTA: Two cross-border investigations supported by Journalismfund Europe have won at the Malta Journalism Awards 2026, with the environment prize going to Profit in Every Drop, an investigation into who profits from groundwater in three of the European Union’s most water-scarce countries.
The winners were announced by the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM) on 1 November 2026. The awards recognise journalism that serves the public interest in Malta, and this year the environmental reporting category honoured reporting built on public records, data and fieldwork across three countries.
The winning investigation
Profit in Every Drop was produced by a cross-border team of seven journalists — Daiva Repečkaitė, Julian Bonnici, Kyriakos Pieridis, Turgut Denizgil, Diogo Augusto, Christodoulos Mavroudis and Andreas Cosma — and published by Amphora Media in Malta and the Cyprus Investigative Reporting Network (CIReN).
Journalismfund Europe supported the project with a €15,440 grant from its Environmental Investigative Journalism programme, awarded on 13 November 2025.
The jury described the investigation as “a wide-ranging investigation that was deeply researched and contributes to the public understanding of environmental issues”.
What the investigation found
Using freedom-of-information requests and registry data, the journalists identified the largest commercial users of groundwater in Malta, Cyprus and Portugal — three of the EU’s most water-scarce member states.
In Malta, the biggest groundwater user is a group of companies that also benefits from government tenders and EU agricultural subsidies, while the government’s own landscaping contractor comes second. Data obtained from Malta’s Environment and Resources Authority showed that three companies controlled by the Polidano brothers extracted nearly 227.5 million litres of water from metered boreholes between 2020 and 2024. Monte Kristo Vineyards alone accounted for nearly 118.7 million litres.
The investigation also found that Malta used 35 million cubic metres of groundwater in 2023, and that more than 63 per cent of registered commercial groundwater boreholes provide “no data” in official records. Malta has no natural lakes or rivers, which makes its groundwater a precious and limited resource.
In Cyprus, just 1.4 per cent of recorded abstraction points account for nearly 68 per cent of the total permitted volume. In Portugal, agriculture, tourism and golf resorts rely largely on self-extracted groundwater that the authorities barely monitor. In all three countries, the investigation found, the cost of drought falls on public finances.
A second prize — and real-world impact
A second investigation supported by Journalismfund Europe, Mediterranean Low Cost, won the Business Journalism prize. It examined touristification and gentrification on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, in Malta, Istanbul, Marrakech and Tunis, and was published by Amphora Media and the Centro di Giornalismo Permanente in Rome.
That investigation also showed what journalism can change. Its data sets were raised in a Parliamentary Standing Committee, and one month after publication the government announced reform proposals. In April 2026, Malta approved Tourism Accommodation Regulations, which came into force in June, requiring short-let operators to display their licence number and a contact person available around the clock.
Amphora Media won five awards in total at this year’s Malta Journalism Awards. Amphora Media is the nonprofit investigative journalism platform of The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation.
Why this matters for climate journalism
Groundwater is a climate story. As droughts grow longer and rainfall becomes less reliable across the Mediterranean, underground water is under growing pressure — and the question of who uses it, and who pays when it runs low, is a question of public interest.
The Malta awards show how data-led environmental reporting can answer that question: public records, obtained through freedom-of-information requests, turned a hidden resource into a public debate — and, in the case of the short-let rules, into new law.
Watan News recently reported on the 49 winners of the 2026 Covering Climate Now journalism awards, another recognition of reporting that puts the climate crisis at the centre of the news agenda.
FAKTA
- Award: Malta Journalism Awards 2026, presented by the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM); winners announced on 1 November 2026.
- Environment prize: Profit in Every Drop, by Amphora Media and the Cyprus Investigative Reporting Network.
- Countries investigated: Malta, Cyprus and Portugal — three of the EU’s most water-scarce member states.
- Support: €15,440 grant from Journalismfund Europe’s Environmental Investigative Journalism programme.
- Malta groundwater use: 35 million cubic metres in 2023; more than 63 per cent of registered commercial boreholes report “no data”.
