ICANN's 2026 New gTLD Round Closed With Over 1,600 Applications
The new gTLD application window closed on 12 August 2026 with more than 1,600 primary applications. What happens next and what it means for you.
Published: · 2 min read
Event date: 2026-08-12 · Source: ICANN 2026 Round Closes with More Than 1,600 New gTLD Applications, published 2026-08-13.
What happened
On 13 August 2026 ICANN announced that the application submission window of the New gTLD Program's 2026 Round had closed the day before, on 12 August 2026 at 23:59 UTC. The window had been open for fifteen weeks, since 30 April 2026. ICANN received more than 1,600 primary applications, and more than 1,100 of those also included a secondary application for a replacement string, to be used if the first choice cannot proceed. According to the announcement, most applications arrived in the final days of the window, and the final count will only be known once the evaluation fees have been confirmed.
Who is affected
- Owners of existing domains: nothing changes for your registrations. No new top-level domain will be delegated soon; the round now moves through review, evaluation and contention resolution.
- Brand owners: the applied-for strings become public on Reveal Day, which ICANN expects within nine weeks of the window closing. That is the moment to check whether a string resembles your mark, because objections are filed after Reveal Day, not before.
- Applicants: the announcement lists the next steps in order: administrative review, publication of application details on Reveal Day, a community input and objection phase, contention-set resolution (including ICANN auctions where a set cannot be resolved otherwise) and then the evaluation of applicants and applications.
What to do
For most readers: nothing. If you protect a brand, put Reveal Day on your calendar and read ICANN's own pages for the objection procedures and deadlines rather than third-party summaries. Do not make DNS or registration changes on the basis of a TLD that does not exist yet, and treat any offer to "pre-register" a name under one of these strings with caution: no such TLD is in the root zone today.
Background
Our TLD directory explains how generic and country-code TLDs differ, and WHOIS vs RDAP covers how registration data for gTLDs is published.
Sources
- ICANN, "ICANN 2026 Round Closes with More Than 1,600 New gTLD Applications", 13 August 2026: https://www.icann.org/en/announcements/details/icann-2026-round-closes-with-more-than-1600-new-gtld-applications-13-08-2026-en