Lake County, FL Trash & Recycling: Holiday Pickup Schedule (2026)

Lake County Code § 23-11 defines "Holiday" as New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day: the six dates that trigger the shift. Section 23-19(a) sets the baseline, garbage and recycling collection happen on the same day each week, yard trash runs on a separate day, and collection normally runs Monday through Friday. Section 23-19(b) then governs what happens when one of those six holidays lands on a scheduled collection day. Rather than skip the run, the county pushes it: the holiday's own route moves to the first day after the holiday, and every other route later in that week shifts back one day to make room. A Monday holiday means Monday's route runs Tuesday and Friday customers get Saturday service.

The code fixes the rule, not the calendar. The dates themselves come from the county's own published Holiday Schedule, which the Office of Solid Waste posts for each year and which lists far more dates than the six in § 23-11, because some county holidays close the landfill and customer service without moving collection at all.

For the rest of the 2026 season the county's published schedule reads as follows. Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 26, 2026: "No Collection - Thursday collection will occur on Friday. All remaining collection days for the week will be moved to the next day." The Day after Thanksgiving Day, Friday, November 27, 2026, is listed separately and carries its own line, "Friday collection will occur on Saturday." Christmas Eve, Thursday, December 24, 2026, is marked "Normal Services" for residential collection, and Christmas Day, Friday, December 25, 2026, reads "No Collection - Friday's collection will occur on Saturday." New Year's Eve, December 31, 2026, is "Normal Services", and New Year's Day, Friday, January 1, 2027, reads "No Collection - Friday's collection will occur on Saturday."

The three service lines move independently of collection. On Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day the schedule marks Landfill Operations at the Central Facility closed, Customer Service closed and Residential Drop-Offs closed. On the Day after Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve the landfill is open while customer service stays closed, and on New Year's Eve all three are open. So a week with no curbside pickup is not necessarily a week with nowhere to take waste yourself.

Two weekday labels on the county's page do not match their own dates, so read the dates rather than the day names. The trash and recycling table lists Veterans Day as "Tuesday, November 11, 2026" while the county's government office table on the same page lists it as "Wednesday, November 11"; November 11, 2026 is a Wednesday. The same table lists New Year's Eve as "Wednesday, December 31, 2026"; December 31, 2026 is a Thursday. Both are typographical slips on the county's part and neither changes the service status, which is Normal Services for both dates, so Veterans Day and New Year's Eve do not move anyone's pickup this year.

Lake County's schedule covers unincorporated areas served by the county's Office of Solid Waste. Cities that run their own collection publish their own holiday calendars, so check with your city if you are inside municipal limits.