ICANN's 1,615 New Domain Applications: What Site Owners Should Do

If you already own a domain like example.com, ICANN's new round of top-level domains changes nothing for you today. Your domain keeps working, there is nothing to migrate, and no new endings can be registered yet. What is worth your time is a careful check of the domain you already have, and a plan to ignore anyone selling "early access" to names that do not exist yet.

On 7 October 2026, ICANN published the list of applications in its 2026 round for new generic top-level domains. The headline number is 1,615 applications, from 481 applicants. That is a lot of possible new endings to the right of the dot, and it is easy to feel you should do something about it.

By the end of this post you will know what was actually announced, which dates matter, and how to check your own domain's lock, expiry date and contact email in a few minutes.

What a new top-level domain actually is

A top-level domain, or TLD, is the last part of a domain name: the .com in example.com, or the .org in example.org. A generic TLD, or gTLD, is one that is not tied to a country code like .in or .ae.

Think of TLDs like street names in a very large city. Your house is on Com Street. ICANN has just received 1,615 requests to build new streets. Building a new street does not move your house, change your address or change your rent.

ICANN runs this process in rounds. Applicants ask for the right to operate a whole ending, not an individual website name under it.

What ICANN announced on 7 October 2026

These are the figures from ICANN's Reveal Day announcement. ICANN says the snapshot "reflects primary string application data as of 7 October 2026" and that "the final number and types of applications will be confirmed on String Confirmation Day." So treat them as preliminary.

• Total applications: 1,615
• Brand applications: 333
• Community-based applications: 16
• Self-identified geographic name applications: 15
• Applications from Applicant Support Program applicants: 51
• Internationalized Domain Names (endings in non-Latin scripts): 21
• Applications for variants: 9

ICANN explains a variant as "when an applicant applies for a string that has other forms in different scripts such as Arabic or Chinese."

By region, the announcement lists:

• North America: 864
• Europe: 506
• Asia/Australia/Pacific: 218
• Africa: 16
• Latin America and the Caribbean: 11

Heads up: ICANN did not publish a per-country breakdown in this announcement. If you see a post claiming "India filed X" or "the UAE filed Y", that number did not come from this release.

The application window itself was open from 30 April to 12 August 2026. The applications are listed on ICANN's 2026 Round Application Publication and Statistics website. At the time of writing (29 October 2026), its statistics page shows all 1,615 applications as Active and zero as Delegated, which means none of them is live in the internet's root yet.

The timeline in plain words

Here is the sequence of dates from ICANN's announcement, with a line on what each step means for you.

• 8 to 21 October 2026, Replacement Period: applicants could swap their applied-for string for a replacement. This has closed.
• 17 November 2026, String Confirmation Day: ICANN confirms the final number and types of applications.
• 27 November 2026, 23:59 UTC: last moment for an applicant to request a 65 percent refund of the evaluation fee. This is about applicants, not you.
• 17 November 2026 to 16 March 2027, Community Input and Objections Period: the public can comment, and parties with standing can file formal objections.
• 19 December 2026 to 4 January 2027: ICANN operations pause for an office closure (from 1:00 UTC on 19 December until 16:00 UTC on 4 January).
• String Evaluation Stage: ICANN says it is "expected to last 180 days."
• Prioritization Draw: on "a to-be-determined date in the first half of 2027."

Why this matters: notice what is missing. The announcement gives no date for when any new TLD goes live or when the public can register names under one. ICANN says the timelines for later milestones, such as publishing String Evaluation results, will be communicated later. Anyone who gives you a firm launch date is guessing.

What changes for whom

This section is our own reading of the announcement, not a statement from ICANN.

If you own a .com, .net, .org or a country-code domain

Nothing changes now. Your domain does not need to be "moved" or "upgraded". No action is required from you because of Reveal Day.

If you run a brand or a business name

The only real question is whether someone applied for an ending that matches or closely resembles your brand. That is a judgement call for a lawyer, not something to settle in a panic. This is general information, not legal advice. The public comment window opens on 17 November 2026, so you have time to look at the published list calmly.

If you were thinking of applying yourself

The 2026 application window closed on 12 August 2026. You cannot join this round now.

Before you start: the domain health check

Our advice: use this news as a reminder to check the domain you already have. New endings may arrive one day, but a missed renewal or an out-of-date contact email can cost you your domain much sooner, and both are easy to fix.

You need:

• The login for your domain registrar (the company you pay for the domain), which may be different from your hosting company.
• Access to the email address on the domain's account.
• A terminal for the optional command checks, or just a browser.
• Review time depends on your registrar and domain portfolio. Reading RDAP data is low risk, but enabling auto-renew can create a future charge and changing registrant details can trigger a 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock. Read Steps 2 and 4 before saving changes.

The checks worth doing now

Step 1: Confirm who actually holds the domain

Log in to your registrar and open the domain. Look at the registrant or owner contact. It should be your business or you, not a former web designer or an employee who left.

Here is a made-up example: a bakery's domain was registered years ago by the owner's nephew, using his personal email. Everything works, so nobody notices. When renewal reminders go to his old inbox, the domain quietly expires. That has nothing to do with new TLDs, but it is worth fixing now.

Step 2: Check the expiry date and turn on auto-renew

In the registrar panel, find the expiry date and the auto-renew setting. Turn auto-renew on and make sure the card on file is valid.

You can also inspect the registry-side expiry event in public RDAP data. This command asks the .com registry's RDAP service (the modern replacement for WHOIS) for its expiration event:

curl -s https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/example.com | grep -o '"eventAction":"expiration","eventDate":"[^"]*"'

You should see one line like this, with your own date:

"eventAction":"expiration","eventDate":"2027-08-13T04:00:00Z"

Heads up: the RDAP expiration event is the registry expiry date. It may differ from the registrar's registrar expiration date after registry auto-renew, and it does not prove that you paid the registrar. Treat your registrar account, renewal receipt and billing status as the source for a paid renewal.

Quick tip: for a .net domain, change /com/ to /net/ in the URL. For other endings, use the ICANN Lookup tool at https://lookup.icann.org/ in your browser.

Why this matters: ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy requires registrars to send at least two renewal reminders, one about a month before expiry and one about a week before, to the registrant email address listed in the domain's official contact information. If that email is dead, the reminders go nowhere.

Step 3: Make sure the registrar lock is on

A registrar lock is a flag that tells the registry to refuse transfer requests. ICANN describes clientTransferProhibited as a status that "tells your domain's registry to reject requests to transfer the domain from your current registrar."

This command shows the status flags on a .com domain:

curl -s https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/example.com | grep -o '"status":\[[^]]*\]'

A well-protected domain usually shows something like this:

"status":["client delete prohibited","client transfer prohibited","client update prohibited"]

If "client transfer prohibited" is missing, look for a setting called Domain Lock, Registrar Lock or Transfer Lock in your registrar panel and switch it on. Menu names vary by registrar. If you ever need to move the domain, our guide on unlocking a domain and getting the auth code walks through it.

Step 4: Update the contact email

Open the registrant contact and confirm the email is one you read every week. A shared address like domains@example.com is better than a personal inbox, as long as more than one person can read it.

Before saving a registrant name, organization or email change, check whether you need to transfer the domain soon. ICANN's Transfer Policy requires a 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock after a Change of Registrant, although a registrar may offer an opt-out before the change. If a transfer is planned, complete it first or follow your registrar's documented opt-out process.

Heads up: if your domain email lives on the same domain, a lapsed domain also breaks the inbox that receives the renewal warning. A backup address on a different domain avoids that loop.

Step 5: Look at the published application list for your brand

If you have a distinctive brand name, open the 2026 round site at https://newgtldprogram-aps.icann.org/statistics and browse the applications section once the list is confirmed on 17 November 2026. You are looking for an ending identical or confusingly similar to your trademark.

If you find one, ICANN's community input page explains your options. Anyone can post a comment on the Application Comment Forum. A formal objection is different: it "must be filed by a party with standing" on one of four grounds: string confusion, legal rights, limited public interest, or community. The general objection window is 104 days from String Confirmation Day for all grounds. String Confusion objections also get a separate 30-day window after updated contention sets are published. Objection procedures require payments made directly to the dispute resolution providers.

This is general information, not legal advice. If a match matters to your business, talk to a trademark lawyer first.

What NOT to do

This is our advice, based on what the announcement does and does not say.

• Do not buy a pile of defensive domains in a panic. None of the 1,615 applied-for endings can take registrations today, so there is nothing to defend against yet.
• Do not pay for "reserve your name" or "pre-registration" offers for new endings. ICANN has not announced a date when the public can register names under any of these new TLDs, so anything sold now is not a registration.
• Do not transfer your domain to a new registrar just because of this news. Moving registrars is a separate decision with its own steps.
• Do not trust per-country application counts unless they link to an ICANN page. The Reveal Day release only lists regions.
• Do not act on unsolicited emails warning that someone is about to register your name under a new ending. Check any claim against ICANN's own pages first.

How to check it worked

After the steps above, you should be able to say yes to all of these:

• The registrant name in your registrar panel is your business or you.
• Auto-renew is on, the billing method is valid, and the registrar account shows the paid renewal status. You have recorded the separate RDAP registry date without treating it as payment proof.
• The RDAP status line includes "client transfer prohibited".
• A test email to the registrant contact address arrives in an inbox someone reads.
• You have a calendar reminder for 17 November 2026 if you want to browse the confirmed application list.

Troubleshooting

The RDAP command prints nothing

Symptom: the curl command returns an empty line. Likely cause: the domain is not a .com (or .net with the changed URL), so that registry has no record of it, or there is a typo. Fix: check the spelling, or use https://lookup.icann.org/ in a browser, which works across endings.

The status shows "client hold" or "server hold"

Symptom: the RDAP status line includes one of these, and your site does not load. Likely cause: ICANN explains that these statuses mean the domain is not activated in the DNS, often because of non-payment, a legal dispute or a pending deletion. Fix: contact your registrar to find out why and resolve it.

The registrar shows the lock as on, but RDAP does not list it

Symptom: your panel says "locked" while the status line lacks "client transfer prohibited". Likely cause: the change may not have reached the registry yet. Fix: wait a while and re-run the command, then ask registrar support to confirm the registry status if it still differs.

You cannot find the registrar at all

Symptom: you do not know which company the domain is registered with. Fix: the ICANN Lookup result and the RDAP output both name the registrar. Use that to reset your login.

The status shows "redemption period" or "pending delete"

Symptom: the RDAP status includes one of these. Likely cause: the domain has expired and been deleted by the registrar. Fix: contact the registrar immediately. Under ICANN's rules, gTLD registries must offer a 30-day Redemption Grace Period during which the registrant can restore the domain.

Your site and email stopped working right after the expiry date

Symptom: the website and mailbox go dark together. Likely cause: the registrar interrupted DNS resolution after expiry and before deletion, as ICANN policy requires. The exact timing depends on the registrar and expiration phase. Fix: renew straight away through your registrar and wait for the registrar to restore resolution.

A side note on the root zone KSK rollover

Separately from the new TLD round, ICANN reported on 15 October 2026 that the root zone KSK rollover, a change to the top-level DNSSEC signing key, was "completed on 11 October 2026." ICANN said it "is aware of reports of issues affecting a limited number of systems" and is still assessing whether they relate to the rollover, with revocation of the previous key scheduled for January 2027. For most site owners this is a job for your DNS provider. If you sign your own zone, our guide to enabling DNSSEC with a DS record covers the parts you control.

While you are in the registrar panel anyway, it is also a good moment to check your renewal price. Our post on the .com wholesale price rise and domain renewals explains what to look for.

The one message worth forwarding

Copy this to whoever manages your domain, whether that is a developer, your host or a colleague:

Hi, quick domain check, no urgency. ICANN published new top-level domain applications on 7 October 2026, but nothing changes for our existing domain. While we are on the subject, could you please confirm: (1) the registrant on example.com is our business, (2) auto-renew is on with a valid card, (3) the registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) is enabled, and (4) the registrant email is an address we actively read. Please also ignore any "pre-register your name" offers for new endings, since ICANN has not announced a registration date. Thanks!

The takeaway: the 1,615 new applications are a long process with no launch date yet, so the useful move today is making sure the domain you already own cannot slip away.