Florida Cosmetology License Renewal

A Florida cosmetology license renews on or before October 31 of each biennial year, and renewal is conditional on completing ten hours of continuing education. The ten hours are not free choice: seven subjects are mandated with minimum hours each, and they account for nine of the ten.

The date

“A cosmetologist shall renew his or her license on or before October 31 each biennial year, according to the fee schedule as outlined in Rule 61G5-24.008, F.A.C.” (Rule 61G5-18.008, last amended 2021).

The ten hours, and what they must contain

The requirement is in the Board’s rule, not the statute — a distinction worth keeping, because the statute only sets a ceiling. Section 477.019(7)(a) authorizes continuing education “not to exceed 10 hours biennially”. The rule then sets it at ten and allocates them (Rule 61G5-32.001):

subject	minimum hours
HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases	1
Sanitation and sterilization	3
OSHA regulations	0.5
Workers’ compensation as it pertains to Florida law	0.5
State and federal laws and rules	2
Chemical makeup as it pertains to hair, skin and nails	1
Environmental issues	1
Elective	1

Nine of the ten hours are directed. Sanitation and sterilization alone is three of them — the same emphasis that runs through the specialty hour requirements and the examination weighting.

The rule also specifies what the sanitation hours must cover: standard cleaning and disinfecting precautions, distinguishing disinfectants from antiseptics, sanitizing hands and disinfecting tools, and “bacterial, viral, and fungal, bloodborne pathogens and parasites, and infection and infestation control”.

The subject-by-subject breakdown, and what each mandated hour must cover, is on the continuing education page. Three of the ten hours are sanitation, which is the salon rules in practice.

Specialists owe the same continuing education

The rule applies to “all licensed cosmetologists and registered specialists” alike, and the statute makes continuing education a condition of renewing “a license or registration as a specialist” — so the specialty registrations carry the same ten hours.

The renewal date quoted above is the one the rule states for a cosmetologist. This site has not read a rule setting the date for a specialty registration, so it does not state one.

One caution on this page in particular

The continuing-education rule is under active amendment. A rule development notice proposing to update 61G5-32.001 was published in March 2026, with no proposed text yet, so the version quoted here — effective February 2020 — remains the operative one. Of everything on this site, this table is the most likely to change first. The date it was last checked is at the foot of this page.