ICANN Reveals 2026 Round Applications for New Generic Top-Level Domains
icann.orgI remember when I worked for a registry (not a registrar) before the first launch of gTLD's. Bizarrely one of the products they were excited to promote was not to register domains under a TLD, but rather, to _block_ them. The idea being that if you wanted to make sure someone else didn't register <company_name>.[sucks, stupid, whatever] you had to pay them (Donuts) to make sure it didn't happen. It felt extortionate.
Apparently it's still a thing. https://kb.centralnicreseller.com/services/brand-protection/...
I worked on the .name application, and it was a key thing we were basically required to demonstrate we could do even back in 2000. ICANN was obsessed with protecting trademark holders.
the domain industry is completely insane
Anthropic applied for `.claude` and `.anthropic`. OpenAI applied for: agent, agi, asi, chatgpt, codex, daybreak, deploy, evals, gpt, mcp, model, oai, openai, skill, & voice.
Meta Registry Holdings LLC applied for agent, aiglasses, facebook, frommeta, insta, instagram, llama, loc, messenger, meta, metaai, metaglasses, metaverse, muse, reels, superintelligence, threads, vrs, wearables, whatsapp
I'll never cease to be amazed at what large companies will throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at just to _apply_ for a new gTLD. I mean what's the demand for whatever.superintelligence? Nobody is going to type that or notice it in a URL bar and think anything but "damn, that's a long TLD" while the dozens of other shorter AI focused TLDs sit there too.
Checked all primary strings for length, the 3 longest (excluding punycode notations):
.superintelligence (17)
.registeredagent (15)
.meditativemind (14)
.intelligence (12) is also in the top 10 longest primary strings.
Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49997249 for the 1372 unique strings
Amusingly, .scam is being applied for.
A real scam would never use that TLD, it would be too obvious. Therefore, you know any .scam website must be legit
Here is a direct link to the applied TLDs: https://newgtldprogram-aps.icann.org/applications
If my counting is correct (the results wrap across multiple pages), 13 companies applied for the .agent TLD.
The CSV download button gives the full table.
Someone applied for .slop, I hope they make it.
Please, no more... don't we already have enough junk tlds?