Massive renormalizable Yang-Mills theories in three dimensions are analysed within the algebraic renormalization in the Landau gauge. In analogy with the four dimensional case, the renormalization of the mass operator A^2 turns out to be expressed in terms of the fields and coupling constant renormalization factors. We verify the relation we obtain for the operator anomalous dimension by explicit calculations in the large N_f. The generalization to other gauges such as the nonlinear Curci-Ferrari gauge is briefly outlined.