Norwich Christmas Bin Collections 2026/27: What to Expect

Norwich City Council has not yet published its Christmas and New Year bin dates for 2026/27. It takes each festive notice down once the holiday is over, so its website has nothing on the subject today. What it did last year is a good guide to what is coming.

The quick answer

• The 2026/27 dates are not published yet. Last year the council’s Christmas notice was online by 3 December.
• Last Christmas, collections ran late for three weeks, from the week of 22 December until they returned to normal on Monday 12 January.
• Garden waste stopped for two weeks: last collection Friday 19 December, first back Monday 5 January.

What is already settled for this Christmas

• The bank holidays fall on Fridays this year. Christmas Day is Friday 25 December 2026, the Boxing Day bank holiday moves to a substitute Monday 28 December, and New Year’s Day is Friday 1 January 2027 (GOV.UK). That is a different shape from 2025, when Christmas fell on a Thursday, so the revised dates below will not repeat exactly.
• Garden waste takes a Christmas break every year. The brown bin subscription covers up to 25 collections a year because there are none over Christmas and New Year (Norwich City Council).
• Your own calendar has the answer too. Norwich prints the festive dates straight into each household’s annual collection calendar. The 2025/26 calendars carried the shifted Christmas dates and a note that bank holiday collections “will be made later than normal and on the dates shown” (Norwich City Council, Friday week two calendar).

Last year’s revised dates

These are 2025/26 dates, not this year’s. They come from the council’s festive notice as it stood on 3 January 2026 (Norwich City Council, archived). The council said collections would be “later than normal for three weeks over the festive period”.

The pattern is simple once you see it. Nothing moved before Christmas Day. From then on, every round slipped by one working day, with two Saturday collections along the way, and the catch-up took until the second Monday of January.

Other council services over Christmas 2025

The council’s Christmas closure notice, online by 3 December 2025, set out the rest (Norwich City Council, archived):

• Bulky waste collections stopped at the end of Friday 19 December and resumed on Friday 2 January.
• Council offices and phone lines closed at 4pm on Christmas Eve and reopened at 9am on Monday 5 January. The out of hours number for emergencies was 01603 412180.
• Council car parks stayed open as usual, and parking enforcement carried on. See parking in Norwich for the tariffs.

Christmas trees, wrapping paper and extra rubbish

There is no kerbside Christmas tree collection in Norwich. The city council’s 2025 advice was to cut a real tree up and put it in the brown garden waste bin if you have one, or take it to a recycling centre, and not to leave it next to your wheelie bin (Norwich City Council, 18 December 2025). Bags left beside bins count as fly-tipping, the council said.

Norfolk County Council, which runs the tips, takes real trees in the green waste container at any recycling centre. Artificial trees in good condition can go to its reuse shops; broken ones go in the metals container. Shiny or foil wrapping paper goes in the non-recyclable container (Norfolk County Council).

The two tips for the city are Norwich North on Morse Road and Norwich South on Ipswich Road. Both need a free booking, and both close on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day. Opening hours, the Christmas closures and booking rules are on our Norwich tip opening times page.

Still to be confirmed

The 2026/27 revised dates, the last garden waste collection before Christmas and the first one in January are all still to come. Going by last year, expect them in late November or the first days of December. We will add the table here when the council publishes it.

More for the season: Norfolk school term dates and Norwich Christmas travel.