Display omitted •Municipal wastewater (MWW) was treated by advanced oxidation technologies (AOTs).•Direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) was investigated as post-treatment.•Ozonation was efficient to remove 12 micropollutants (MPs) determined in MWW.•UV/H2O2 as pre-treatment minimized the flux decline.•Flux decline was strongly related to the DOC content of the DCMD feed. In this work, the combination of advanced oxidation technologies (AOTs) and direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) was investigated for the treatment of municipal wastewater collected from the secondary clarifier of a municipal wastewater treatment plant (MWWTP). Average removal efficiencies of the 12 micropollutants present in the wastewater samples were higher than 95 % with ozonation (O3) and photolytic ozonation (UV/O3), whereas only near 50 % of removal efficiency was achieved with UV-peroxidation (UV/H2O2). When the ozone-based processes were combined with DCMD, the concentration of these micropollutants were below the detection limits in the respective permeate, increasing the quality of the treated water. However, the permeate fluxes in DCMD were remarkably higher when the wastewater was pre-treated with UV/H2O2 instead of O3, most probably due to the better disinfection achieved by UV/H2O2. It was also confirmed that the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) of the wastewater strongly affects the permeate fluxes achieved by DCMD. In this regard, the combination of the oxidation and membrane separation processes is more appropriate for wastewaters with low DOC contents (< 15 mg L−1).