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BACKGROUND Among anthropogenic wastewaters, landfill leachate is known to contain numerous persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, noxious microorganisms, etc., which makes the establishment of an efficient treatment procedure for leachate a matter of great importance. In this work, municipal waste landfill leachate was subjected to various types of chemical ( CHEM) and biological ( BIO) treatment with the final aim of establishing an optimal treatment scheme combining of individual physico-chemical and biological processes. RESULTS Three different treatment strategies ( CHEM-BIO, BIO-CHEM and BIO-CHEM-BIO) were compared based on biodegradability and removal efficiencies achieved. Due to high initial biodegradability of raw leachate, the most efficient combined process was aerobic biological pre-treatment followed by Fenton treatment and subsequently biological post-treatment. The efficiency of combined treatment processes was investigated at laboratory scale, with over 90% COD and BOD7 removal. Finally, in order to evaluate the economic efficiency of the processes, consumption of Fenton's reagent was compared for CHEM-BIO and BIO-CHEM setups, with the latter achieving three times lower reagent consumption, at the same time providing similar treatment efficiency. CONCLUSIONS A readily-applicable efficient and economically feasible technological solution is provided for the treatment of typical municipal landfill leachate. © 2014 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]