Blue Lagoon on Comino: You Now Need a Pass to Set Foot on It
Updated September 30, 2026 · 7 min read
The most reviewed thing on Malta, by a distance, is a boat to a bay on an island with almost nobody living on it. It is the top offer in our entire stock: a Blue Lagoon trip with 21,368 reviews, against 8,770 for the next one.
And since the lagoon started running on a landing pass, there is one sentence that decides how your day goes. It is on the official booking site, and it reads: “No one can step on land at the Lagoon without it.”
What the pass is
The Access Management System, usually shortened to AMS, is a web platform that issues a free QR code for a timed slot at the Blue Lagoon. You book it yourself at the official site, you get the code by email, and it is scanned before you disembark. You are then given a wristband.
The three slots:
| Slot | Times |
|---|---|
| Morning | 08:00–13:00 |
| Afternoon | 13:30–17:30 |
| Sunset | 18:00–22:00 |
The half hour missing between the slots is not an oversight. The AMS describes it as a boat manoeuvring allowance, used at the marine coordinator’s discretion so arrivals and departures do not collide.
The practical details, all from the operator’s own FAQ:
- Bookable up to two months in advance, and on the same day subject to availability.
- One reservation covers up to four people.
- Bookings cannot be modified. If your plans move, you book again.
- The code can be passed to someone else, as long as it has not been scanned.
- Lose the email and you lose the code – it cannot be retrieved from the system.
- The wristband has to be returned before you leave, which the operator explains as a measure to reduce pollution.
- You may leave and come back within your slot. Arrive early and you may be asked to wait; arrive late and you get what is left of your slot, not an extension.
There is no fence. Gatekeepers patrol instead, and anyone ashore without a valid pass is, in the FAQ’s words, “considered unauthorised and may be removed by patrolling officers.”
Four ways you do not need one
This is the part almost nobody explains, and it changes what you should book.
Swimming does not need a pass. The pass is for setting foot on land. If your boat moors off the rocks and you go in off the ladder, you are in the water, not on the shore.
A quick stop at the kiosk does not need one – but the FAQ is specific: you buy and go straight back to the boat. Staying ashore turns you into the unauthorised visitor above.
Passing through does not need one. If you are using the hardstanding paths to walk on to somewhere else on Comino and not stopping in the lagoon, no pass is required.
Children under five do not need one. That exemption is general, not tied to passing through – it applies wherever they are in the lagoon, as long as they are with a parent or guardian.
The ferry is separate from all of this. The AMS does not sell it, does not coordinate timetables with it, and takes no responsibility for a boat you miss – and it asks you to check that your operator is registered with Transport Malta for the Blue Lagoon run. A list of authorised vessels is published on the same site.
The boat trips, and the email you will get
The big one is a 7-hour cruise at €25, 4.4 stars from 21,368 reviews, leaving from Bugibba Jetty. Inside the price: swimming in the Blue Lagoon, a photo stop at the Crystal Lagoon – photo stop only, no swimming – the Comino sea caves, waterslides and underwater viewing windows, padded sun lounges on a first-come basis, and three to four hours on Gozo. Not inside: food and drink, which you buy on board by card, snorkelling gear, towels and swimwear, and land transport on Gozo unless you selected it at checkout.
Two lines from that booking page are worth more than the rest of it:
The first answers the question this whole article is about. Asked which slot to book, the operator says an email “will be sent to you on the morning of the excursion.” So if you are on an organised trip, do not guess your slot weeks ahead – wait for the boat to tell you.
The second is seasonal: from September to May a large sailing catamaran may be used instead, and that boat has no underwater windows. If the windows are why your children want to go, that is a summer product.
Alternatives in the same stock:
- A 6-hour Comino trip at €30, 4.7 stars from 8,770 reviews
- A small-group day trip at €30, 4.8 stars from 2,648 reviews – the best rated of the group
- A plain return ferry to the Blue Lagoon at €15, 4.6 stars from 844 reviews, with a Gozo option
Our Gozo, Comino and Blue Lagoon category is the largest on the site: 208 offers from €6.50, median €60. That median tells you what the day usually costs once you stop looking at the cheapest line.
Which slot to take
The morning slot is the long one and it is also the one the day-boat fleet is built around – seven-hour cruises leaving Bugibba and Sliema all arrive inside it.
The sunset slot, 18:00 to 22:00, is the one the big cruises do not use. The water is warmest at the end of the day, the light is better, and the rocks are emptier. What you give up is the colour: the lagoon is that particular turquoise because of white sand under shallow water, and it needs sun overhead to do it.
If you have one day and want the photograph, take the morning slot and be on the first boat. If you have a second day, take the sunset one and swim.
One honest warning about the whole thing. Comino is a protected area and the cap on numbers exists because the bay was being overwhelmed; that is the point of the system, not an inconvenience within it. The pass costs nothing and takes two minutes. The people it removes from the rocks are the ones who did not bother.
For the rest of the archipelago, the same question about what a headline price really contains applies everywhere – see Gozo in one day and the Three Cities, where the answer is a temple ticket in one case and a whole town in the other. The boat trips category holds 162 offers from €5, median €40, if you want the harbour rather than the lagoon.
