Methods, systems, and devices for recovering fatigued ferroelectric memory cells are described. Recovery voltages may be applied to a ferroelectric memory cell that is fatigued due to repeated access (read or write) operations. The recovery voltage may have a greater amplitude than the access voltage and may include multiple voltage pulses or a constant voltage. The recovery operation may be performed in the background as the memory array operates, or it may be performed when a host device is not actively using the memory array. The recovery operations may be performed periodically or may include discrete series of pulses distributed among several instances.