ICANN 2026 Round: What the Official Reveal Day List Reveals
Discover what the list of 1,615 applications for the 2026 ICANN round reveals, and how it compares with the previous round in 2012.
Fourteen years after the first ICANN application round for new extensions, the 2026 application window ran from April 30 to August 12, 2026. Then, on October 7, after weeks of rumours and announcements released bit by bit, ICANN unveiled the official list of applicants and future new extensions.
- 1,615 applications submitted by 481 applicants between April 30 and August 12, 2026
- 263 extensions have been applied for by at least two applicants, accounting for 55% of all applications
- The most sought-after extensions are .agent (13 applicants), .bit (11), followed by .api, .brand and .hub (10 each)
- 333 applications are for dotBrand extensions, representing one in five applications
- Leading themes include artificial intelligence, crypto and blockchains
- We will have to wait until 2027 at the earliest to see some of these extensions reach the market in successive waves
Reveal Day 2026 in one infographic
Reveal Day 2026: key takeaways
ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the organisation responsible for coordinating domain name extensions worldwide. It sets the rules governing the entire domain name industry. Learn more about the different players in the domain name industry.
During the 2026 application round’s “Reveal Day“, held on October 7, 2026 at 18:00 UTC, ICANN published the requested extension and the applicant’s name for each application. Here is the official list published by ICANN, which we used as the basis for the analyses presented in this article.
The 2012 vs. 2026 rounds: fewer applications, more competition
| 2012 round | 2026 round | |
|---|---|---|
| Applications | 1,930 | 1,615 (16% fewer) |
| Unique extensions applied for | 1,409 | 986 |
| Extensions applied for by at least 2 applicants | 234 | 263 |
| Brand extensions (dotBrand) | approximately 600* (31%) | 333 (21%) |
| Extensions using non-Latin scripts (IDNs) | 116 (6%) | 21 (1.3%) |
| Declared community-based extensions | 84 | 16 |
| Declared geographic extensions | 66 | 15 |
| Application fee | $185,000 | $227,000 |
(*) Approximately 600, according to an ICANN presentation from 2014. The “brand” category did not officially exist in 2012. In 2026, applicants declare themselves whether their application is for a brand extension.
The first thing that stands out is the contrast between the number of applications, down 16%, and the number of different extensions applied for, down 30%. In other words, applicants have increasingly converged on the same extensions: 55% of applications face competition from at least one other applicant, compared with 39% in 2012.
The top 5 applicants in the 2026 round
| Applicant (filing company) | Applications | Share of total | Including contested extensions | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Link Freedom Group Ltd | 158 | 9.8% | 118 |
| 2 | XYZ.COM LLC | 139 | 8.6% | 100 |
| 3 | Registry Services, LLC | 77 | 4.8% | 66 |
| 4 | Intercap Registry Inc. | 71 | 4.4% | 54 |
| 5 | Radix Technologies Inc SEZC | 46 | 2.8% | 41 |
In 2012, Donuts held the record with 307 applications, ahead of Google (101) and Amazon (76). Today, the web giants are considerably less ambitious in this area: Google has submitted 39 applications, Meta 18, OpenAI 15 and Amazon 8.
In 2026, Link Freedom Group takes the lead with 158 applications, accounting for nearly one in ten. The top 20 applicants account for 50% of all applications. At the other end of the spectrum, 343 out of 480 applicants, or 71% of all applicants, submitted just one application.
The most sought-after extensions
In total, 164 companies are competing for 263 extensions. Here is the ranking of the most requested extensions:
| Extension | Number of applicants |
|---|---|
| .agent | 13 |
| .bit | 11 |
| .api, .brand, .hub | 10 each |
| .pop, .robot | 9 each |
| .max, .official, .pod, .zen | 8 each |
| .agi, .ask, .connect, .firm, .key, .lab, .mind, .therapy, .vibe | 7 each |
| .fix, .gaming, .gen, .good, .human, .labs, .mart, .omg, .portal, .share, .wealth | 6 each |
| .aid, .air, .asi, .craft, .crypto, .etc, .fab, .get, .gym, .hello, .list, .mcp, .merch, .ops, .project, .robotics, .sign, .sys, .tap, .tea, .way, .yes | 5 each |
The clear winner is .agent, with 13 applicants, including Google, Meta and OpenAI. This matches the record number of applicants for .app in 2012.
Most contests involve fewer applicants:
- 32 extensions have been applied for by 4 applicants,
- 64 extensions by 3 applicants,
- 114 extensions are contested by 2 applicants.
Looking at all applications, and setting dotBrand extensions aside for now, the most common themes are:
- Artificial intelligence and robotics: .agent, .agentic, .agi, .asi, .gpt, .intelligence, .llm, .mcp, .model, .prompt, .robot, .robotics, .skill, .superintelligence, .人工智能 (“artificial intelligence” in Chinese)…
- Crypto and blockchains: .ada, .ape, .avax, .bit, .btc, .bitcoin, .block .chain, .coin, .crypto, .ether, .icp, .nft, .sol, .solana, .sui, .token, .tron, .trx, .wallet, .xmr, .zec…
Another trend is that shorter extensions are winning out. More than one in four applications (461 out of 1,614, or 29%) are for extensions consisting of three characters.
Brands go on the offensive: 333 dotBrand extensions
A dotBrand is an extension reserved exclusively for a brand’s own use, such as .google or .audi.
These account for 333 applications (21% of the total), submitted by 247 different companies:
| Company | Extensions |
|---|---|
| 20: .alphabet, .beam, .chromebook, .chromium, .deepmind, .fitbit, .gemini, .gemma, .gke, .keep, .lens, .lyria, .nest, .pixel, .sheets, .slides, .veo, .waymo, .waze, .workspace | |
| Meta | 12: .facebook, .insta, .instagram, .llama, .messenger, .meta, .metaai, .metaglasses, .muse, .reels, .threads, .whatsapp |
| Amazon | 8: .alexa, .echo, .eero, .kgs, .kuiper, .leo, .ring, .twitch |
| OpenAI | 5: .chatgpt, .codex, .gpt, .oai, .openai |
| Anthropic | 2: .anthropic, .claude |
| Microsoft | 2: .copilot, .msft |
| Examples of other brands | 284 in total, including: .adidas, .adobe, .airbnb, .bankofamerica, .canva, .capcut, .cloudflare, .dunlop, .ebay, .ethereum, .etsy, .goldmansachs, .haier, .huawei, .indeed, .inditex, .massimodutti, .mazda, .newbalance, .proton, .ralphlauren, .roblox, .salesforce, .shopify, .slack, .tiktok, .tumblr, .uber, .upsa, .vercel, .warhammer, .wise, .wix, .xiaomi, .yeah… |
Among dotBrand applications, 17 extensions are contested: .boost, .easy, .echo (Amazon versus ECHO Domain Co), .epic, .force, .gen, .gpt (OpenAI versus Link Freedom Group and Pirin Tablet), .hype, .lens, .leo, .mesh, .owl, .slides (Google versus Intercap Registry), .tap, .wise, .wiz and .yeah.
🇫🇷 In France, 9 companies have entered the race: .airliquide (Air Liquide), .atos (Atos), .bpce (BPCE), .cnp (CNP Assurances), .conex (Conex), .ledger (Ledger), .mbda (MBDA), .michelin (Michelin) and .sodexo (Sodexo).
A few geoTLDs and IDNs
The list of applications also includes:
- 15 geographic extensions (geoTLDs): .bali, .beijing, .bremen, .budapest, .campania, .linz, .lugano, .montecarlo, .roma, .salzburg, .ulm, .vienna, .yueyang and .québec, with its accent, which is therefore both a geoTLD and an IDN 💡
- 21 extensions using non-Latin scripts (IDNs), including .québec. The other 20 use Chinese or Japanese characters.
What happens next? The 2026 application timeline
Reveal Day is only the first step before new extensions reach the market. Here is what applicants can expect, according to the timeline published by ICANN:
| Date | Stage |
|---|---|
| October 8 to 21, 2026 | Replacement period: applicants can switch to their backup extension |
| November 17, 2026 | “String Confirmation Day”: final list of extensions and contention sets |
| November 27, 2026 | Last day to withdraw an application and recover 65% of the evaluation fee |
| November 17, 2026 to March 16, 2027 | Comment and objection period (public, governments and communities) |
| First half of 2027 | Random drawing to determine the order in which applications are processed |
| After that | Extension evaluation (scheduled to take 180 days), auctions in the event of contention, contracts and then launch: ICANN has not announced any dates |
Keep in mind that an application is not the same as a launched extension. In 2012, out of 1,930 applications, 1,241 resulted in a live extension (64%), according to ICANN statistics as of August 31, 2026.
Nothing has been decided yet, and we will not see new extensions on the market before 2027. In the meantime, join us on November 17 to discover the final list of extensions set to reshape the web landscape!
And if you do not want to wait to protect your brand:
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