Landfill leachate is a contaminated liquid containing an extensive range of organic and inorganic pollutants. Therefore, it could pose serious risks to the environment by polluting soil and groundwater. In this study, the application of magnetic CuFe2O4/RGO nanocatalyst for persulfate activation was investigated in mature landfill leachate remediation. In this regard, CuFe2O4/RGO was synthesized through straightforward sonochemical co-precipitation method, and was characterized by different analysis approaches (FTIR, XRD, EDX, Raman, VSM, and TEM). A reaction mechanism for persulfate activation in this process was elucidated, and the influence of initial pH, persulfate concentration and catalyst loading were evaluated on the efficiency of the process as well. Under optimum condition, final COD, NH3-N and color removal efficiencies reached to 65.1%, 65%, and 58% respectively, and regenerability of the catalyst was assessed during five consecutive runs. Furthermore, a comparison between functional groups of the initial and degraded leachate samples was performed using ATR-FTIR analysis. In this way, the degraded products after the oxidation process were studied, and the results showed that the treatment system was capable of degrading aromatic compounds to aliphatic ones. (C) 2019 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.