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 across seven mandated subjects (Rule 61G5-32.001).

Nine of the ten hours are directed, and only one is the licensee’s to choose. The largest single allocation is sanitation and sterilization at three hours — the same emphasis that runs through the specialty hour requirements and the examination weighting, and in practice it is the salon rules.

Which seven subjects, how many hours each, and what the rule says each of them must actually cover are set out subject by subject on the continuing education page.

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.

If the date has already passed

A credential that is not renewed by its date becomes delinquent, and delinquency carries a fee of its own on top of the renewal. Inactive status is a separate thing again, with its own renewal fee and its own charge for coming back. The three rules, and what each route adds up to, are under lapsed and inactive credentials.

A specialty registration runs on a different clock

The renewal date quoted above is the one the rule states for a cosmetologist. A specialty registration is governed by a rule of its own, and it does not set a date at all — it sets a term:

All specialty registrations shall be valid for a period of two years or until the end of the biennial licensure renewal cycle in which they are first issued, whichever occurs first. The biennial licensure renewal cycle for all specialty registrations shall coincide with the biennial licensure renewal cycle used for the renewal of cosmetology licenses (Rule 61G5-29.013(1)).

“Whichever occurs first” is the operative phrase, and the answer is not simply two years. A registration issued part way through a biennium expires at the end of that biennium rather than two years from the day it was issued, so a registration taken out late in a cycle runs for less than a full term. The cycles themselves are aligned, so the registration and the license come up together.

The same rule routes a registrant’s continuing education to Rule 61G5-32.001 — the table above — including the board-approved HIV/AIDS course.

One exemption, and it is narrower than it first reads:

Spouses of members of the Armed Forces of the United States are exempted from all registration renewal provisions, but only in cases of absence from the state because of their spouses’ duties with the Armed Forces (Rule 61G5-29.013(3)).

It runs to the spouse of a service member rather than to the service member, and it depends on absence from Florida for that reason.

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.