A hybrid approach for the remediation of recalcitrant dye wastewater is proposed. The chlorine-mediated electrochemical oxidation of real textile effluents and synthetic samples (using Ti/IrO2-RuO2-TiO2anodes), lead to discoloration by 92% and 89%, respectively, in 100 min, without significant mineralization. The remediation was obtained through biodegradation, Results show that the electrochemical discoloration enhances the effluent biodegradability with microbial consortia were able to reduce the COD of the reactive dyes mixture by 90% in 96 h, while the COD of the electrolyzed textile effluent solution decreased by a 94% after 144 h. Based on results obtained through FT-IR and GC–MS, it is likely that azo group stripping and oxidative cleavage of dyes occur due to the nucleophilic attack of active chlorine species during electro-oxidation. This leads to generation of aromatic intermediates which are further desulfonated, deaminated or oxidized only at their functional groups. These aromatic intermediates were mineralized into simpler organic acids and aldehydes by bacterial consortia. obtained results confirm the capability of the proposed hybrid oxidation scheme for the remediation of textile wastewater.