ICANN reveals 1,615 new gTLD applications in 2026 round

ICANN opens the books on 1,615 new gTLD applications

ICANN has published the complete list of applications submitted in the 2026 Round of its New Generic Top-Level Domains Program, exposing both the applied-for strings and the entities behind them. The release, which the organisation marks as Reveal Day, went out on 7 October 2026 through the round's Application Publication and Statistics site and drew attention on Hacker News's front page.

Under the community-developed policy set out in the Applicant Guidebook, the published dataset covers every applied-for primary string, any applicable variant or replacement strings, the contention sets in CSV form, and the public portions of each application. Contention sets are the flashpoints to watch: they identify strings that more than one applicant is chasing.

The numbers behind the round

The submission window ran from 30 April to 12 August 2026. According to ICANN's snapshot of primary-string data as of 7 October, the round drew 1,615 applications, of which 333 are brand applications, 16 are community-based, and 15 are self-identified geographic names. A further 51 came through the Applicant Support Program, 21 sought Internationalized Domain Names, and 9 applied for variants — strings that have alternate written forms in scripts such as Arabic or Chinese.

Applicant geography leans heavily toward the West. ICANN counts 864 applications from North America and 506 from Europe, compared with 218 from Asia, Australia and the Pacific, 16 from Africa, and 11 from Latin America and the Caribbean.

ICANN President and CEO Kurtis Lindqvist described the reveal as a key milestone in the DNS's next expansion, saying the bids reflect how organisations worldwide are finding new ways to establish credible online identities and reach internet users, and committed the organisation to an evaluation process that is even-handed and predictable. ICANN notes the figures are provisional: final counts will be locked in on String Confirmation Day.

What happens next

The first deadline is already live. During a Replacement Period running from 8 to 21 October 2026, applicants who filed a second-choice string can switch to it. The replacement is only usable if it does not match another applied-for primary or replacement string, and ICANN warns that a switched string can still end up in contention later, for instance through a singular/plural notification or a String Confusion Objection.

String Confirmation Day follows on 17 November 2026, when ICANN will publish the definitive string list plus updated contention sets. That day also opens the Community Input and Objections Period, which runs until 16 March 2027, and starts a ten-day window in which applicants can withdraw and recover 65 percent of the gTLD evaluation fee, with requests due by 23:59 UTC on 27 November.

During the input period, the public can comment via the Application Comment Forum, and governments can issue Governmental Advisory Committee Early Warnings, alongside singular/plural notifications and formal objections. ICANN will pause round operations for its end-of-year closure from 19 December to 4 January, and says the objections timetable already builds in that gap so participants keep their full allotted time.

Evaluation then takes over. All strings are reviewed concurrently in a String Evaluation Stage expected to last about 180 days, after which a Prioritization Draw — scheduled for some point in the first half of 2027 on a date still to be set — will determine the order in which applications and contention sets are processed. ICANN has not yet announced dates for publishing evaluation results or starting contention resolution.

Why it matters

Reveal Day is the point at which the next expansion of the web's namespace stops being abstract and becomes a concrete list of strings, owners and conflicts. With 1,615 applications on the table — a third of them from brands — the data now gives registry operators, trademark holders and governments a fixed map of what may soon sit at the top level of the DNS, and a limited window to push back on anything problematic. The heavy concentration of applicants in North America and Europe, against single-digit counts from Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, will also fuel debate about how globally representative the expansion is. For engineers and platform teams, the practical takeaway is patience: whichever strings survive objections, contention and evaluation, new delegations to the root remain a 2027 story at the earliest.