.UK WHOIS Ends 9 Feb 2027: Check Your Domain With RDAP

On Tuesday 9 February 2027, Nominet moves .UK domains to a new registry platform, retires the old port 43 WHOIS service, and stops letting people manage .UK domains directly with Nominet. Nominet's pages do not say your domain stops working, but it is sensible to know who your registrar is, make sure you can log in there, and move any WHOIS scripts over to RDAP. The good news is that you can check all of this in about ten minutes with one curl command.

Here is the part that surprised me. At the time of writing (30 October 2026), the official IANA record for .uk already shows a dash where the WHOIS server used to be, and lists only an RDAP address. So some WHOIS tools that look up the server automatically may have started to struggle months before the February date.

By the end of this guide you will be able to find your .UK registrar from the command line, read the RDAP answer with confidence, and replace an old WHOIS lookup with a short Python script.

What the .UK change actually is

Nominet is the registry for .UK. A registry runs the master list of every name under a domain ending, and a registrar is the shop that sells you a name and lets you manage it.

On its blog, Nominet confirms the move to its new platform "will take place on Tuesday, 9th February 2027", and calls this "the transition date". On its .UK standardisation page, Nominet says that from that date "all .UK registrants will need to manage their .UK domains directly through a registrar". A registrant is simply the person or organisation that holds the domain.

The second change is about how the public looks up domain records. WHOIS is an old text protocol that answers questions like "who is the registrar for this name?" over network port 43. RDAP, the Registration Data Access Protocol, answers the same questions over normal HTTPS and returns structured JSON, a common data format that both people and programs can read.

Nominet's RDAP page says: "On 9 February 2027, Nominet will retire the WHOIS protocol (sometimes referred to as port 43)". It adds that RDAP "will become the primary method for accessing public registration data".

Think of it like a library replacing its old card catalogue with a search computer. The books are the same, and they stay on the same shelves. Only the way you look them up changes.

Why this matters: if you hold a .UK name with a registrar, the WHOIS switch is about how public records are looked up. The two groups who need to act are people who manage their domain directly with Nominet, and people who run tools or scripts that still speak WHOIS.

If you are reading this from outside the UK, this is part of a wider move. ICANN, which coordinates generic endings like .org and .net, says that as of 28 January 2025 gTLD registries and registrars "are no longer required to provide WHOIS services (except for .com, .name, and .post)".

Before you start

Here is the checklist:

• A terminal: Terminal on macOS, any Linux shell, or PowerShell or WSL on Windows, with curl available.
• Python 3 for the JSON viewer and the script in Step 3. Run python3 --version to check.
• The .UK domain name you want to check, for example example.co.uk.
• Your registrar account login details, or at least the email address you used to sign up.
• About ten to fifteen minutes.
• Risk level: very low. Every command in this guide only reads public data. Nothing changes your domain or DNS.

How to find your registrar and get ready

These four steps cover the whole job. Steps 1 and 2 are for everyone with a .UK name. Step 3 is for anyone with a WHOIS tool or script. Step 4 is for direct registrants.

Step 1: Find your domain's registrar with RDAP

The .UK RDAP service lives at https://rdap.nominet.uk/uk/. That is the base address the IANA root zone database lists for .uk, and the same one IANA's RDAP bootstrap file dns.json gives for uk. A bootstrap file is a public list that tells RDAP tools which server to ask for each domain ending.

To ask about one domain, you add domain/ and the name to the end of the base address. This is the standard format from RFC 9082, the RDAP query specification, which gives the syntax as domain/<domain name>.

The command below fetches the RDAP record for your domain and pipes it into Python's built-in JSON formatter so it is easy to read. Replace example.co.uk with your own name.

curl -s https://rdap.nominet.uk/uk/domain/example.co.uk | python3 -m json.tool

The -s flag keeps curl quiet. Python's documentation says that from Python 3.14 you can also run python -m json, and that python -m json.tool "remains supported".

You should see a block of indented JSON. For a real public example, I ran the same command against bbc.co.uk on 30 October 2026. The top of the answer started like this:

{
    "rdapConformance": [
        "redacted",
        "rdap_level_0"
    ],
    "objectClassName": "domain",

Further down you will find these useful parts:

• status: the domain's status codes. For bbc.co.uk it showed server delete prohibited, server transfer prohibited and server update prohibited, which are protective locks.
• events: dates such as registration, last changed and expiration. The expiration date is a handy renewal check.
• nameservers: the DNS servers the domain points to.
• secureDNS: whether DNSSEC is switched on. For bbc.co.uk it showed "delegationSigned": false.
• entities: the people and companies linked to the domain, each with a roles list.

Now find your registrar. Look inside entities for the entry whose roles list contains "registrar". RFC 9083, the RDAP response format, uses exactly this roles field to show how each entity relates to the domain.

Inside that entity there is a vcardArray. This is contact data in jCard format, a JSON version of an electronic business card. The line that starts with "fn" holds the registrar's name. Here is the registrar entity from the bbc.co.uk answer, trimmed for space:

{
    "roles": ["registrar"],
    "handle": "BBC",
    "vcardArray": ["vcard", [
        ["version", {}, "text", "4.0"],
        ["fn", {}, "text", "British Broadcasting Corporation"],
        ["url", {}, "uri", "https://www.bbc.co.uk/"]
    ]]
}

For most people, fn will name a hosting company or domain seller. Some large organisations act as their own registrar, as the BBC does here.

Heads up: you will also see an entity with the role registrant, and its details will look mostly empty. That is on purpose. The rdapConformance list includes redacted, and the redacted section lists fields such as Registrant Name, Registrant Street and Registrant Email as hidden under "Server policy". Your personal details are not shown to the world.

If you prefer clicking to typing, Nominet's website has a Lookup item in its main navigation. Go to the Nominet blog and choose Lookup from the top menu.

Step 2: Check your registrar login and contact details now

Once you know your registrar's name, go to its website and log in now, while there is no time pressure.

Why this matters: Nominet's standardisation page says that after the transition date "you will need to manage your domain and make any updates through your registrar", and that "you'll need to make sure you have access to do this". If you forgot the password or the old email address is dead, you want to discover that in November, not on the day you need to change something.

After you log in, find the contact or account details section in your registrar's panel. Every registrar names this differently, so check your registrar's own help pages if you cannot see it. Confirm these items:

• The email address is one you read today, and the phone number and postal address are current.
• You can see your .UK domain listed in the account.

There is a good reason to keep these fresh. Nominet's page on the updated .UK Registrant Terms says the new terms "come into effect on the 9th February 2027". Under those terms, registrants must update any changes to their details within 7 days, and respond to verification requests within 30 days.

The same page says that failing to keep details accurate, or not answering verification requests, "may result in restrictions being placed on the domain or the domain being cancelled". This is general information, not legal advice. Read the official Registrant Terms page linked at the end of this post for the full text.

Made-up example: Priya set up example.co.uk for her bakery in 2019 using a work email from a job she left in 2022. She runs the Step 1 command, sees her registrar's name, and tries to log in. The password reset email goes to the dead inbox. Because she found this in October, she has months to sort it out with her registrar's support team instead of a stressful afternoon later.

Quick tip: while you are logged in, check that auto renew is on and the payment card has not expired. If you are thinking about moving registrar at the same time, our guide to domain transfers, auth codes and the 60 day lock explains the general steps. Nominet has not published detailed new transfer steps on the pages I checked, so confirm the current process with your registrar before you start.

Step 3: Test your WHOIS tools and move them to RDAP

Skip this step if you never use WHOIS. Read on if you have monitoring scripts, expiry checkers or security tools that look up .UK names.

Nominet's RDAP page says that before switching off port 43, it will update the IANA records for .UK so that they no longer advertise WHOIS. It warns: "This may affect some WHOIS clients that rely on locating the WHOIS server starting from August 2026."

So, first test whatever you have today. Run your usual WHOIS lookup against a .UK name and see if it still returns an answer. If it fails to find a server, that is this change.

Nominet offers a short-term fix: "In the short term you can configure your WHOIS client to use the server 'whois.nic.uk'." Check your WHOIS client's manual for the option that sets the server. Treat this as a stopgap only. Nominet recommends RDAP for the long term, and port 43 WHOIS is due to be retired on 9 February 2027.

The real fix is to switch to RDAP. Here is a small Python script that uses only the standard library. It asks the .UK RDAP server about each domain you pass in, then prints the status codes and the registrar name.

Save the following code as rdap_check.py:

import json
import sys
import urllib.error
import urllib.request

RDAP_BASE = "https://rdap.nominet.uk/uk/"


def lookup(domain):
    url = RDAP_BASE + "domain/" + domain
    req = urllib.request.Request(url, headers={"Accept": "application/rdap+json"})
    try:
        with urllib.request.urlopen(req, timeout=15) as resp:
            return json.load(resp)
    except urllib.error.HTTPError as err:
        print(f"{domain}: HTTP {err.code}")
        return None


def registrar_name(data):
    for entity in data.get("entities", []):
        if "registrar" in entity.get("roles", []):
            for field in entity.get("vcardArray", [None, []])[1]:
                if field[0] == "fn":
                    return field[3]
    return "(not shown)"


for name in sys.argv[1:]:
    data = lookup(name)
    if data:
        print(name)
        print("  status:   " + ", ".join(data.get("status", [])))
        print("  registrar: " + registrar_name(data))

How it works: urllib.request.Request builds the request with an Accept header for application/rdap+json, the RDAP media type from RFC 9083. urllib.request.urlopen sends it with a 15 second timeout, and json.load reads the reply. An error such as 404 raises urllib.error.HTTPError, and the script prints its code instead of crashing.

The command below runs the script against two names, one real .UK domain and one that is not under .UK at all:

python3 rdap_check.py bbc.co.uk example.com

When I ran this on 30 October 2026, the output was:

bbc.co.uk
  status:   server delete prohibited, server transfer prohibited, server update prohibited
  registrar: British Broadcasting Corporation
example.com: HTTP 404

The 404 for example.com is expected. The Nominet RDAP server only answers for .UK names, which I come back to in the troubleshooting section.

Heads up: this script only knows the .UK server. For other endings, read IANA's bootstrap file at https://data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json to find the right RDAP server.

Every Nominet RDAP answer includes terms of service saying you will not use the data "to enable high volume, automated, electronic processes". Checking your own handful of domains once a day is a sensible pace.

Step 4: If you manage your domain directly with Nominet, watch for contact

A small group of people manage their .UK domains directly with Nominet instead of through a registrar. Nominet says direct management "will not be possible after this change". It also says it will help these registrants transfer their names to a registrar, and that "We will contact all direct registrants in due course".

If that is you, there is no need to panic. Nominet says that until the transition date "our current processes remain the same". Read the updated Registrant Terms and watch for Nominet's message.

General safety advice, not specific to Nominet: when a big change is in the news, scam emails often follow. If you get an unexpected email about your domain, do not click the link inside it. Instead, type the address of Nominet's site or your registrar's site into your browser yourself, and log in from there. If something looks wrong, ask your registrar first. Nominet's Registrant Terms page lists domainsupport@nominet.uk as the escalation contact when a registrar cannot help.

How to check it worked

• Registrar found: running the Step 1 curl command against your domain returns JSON, and you can point to the entity whose roles contains registrar, with a name in its fn line.
• Expiry date known: in events, the expiration entry shows a date, and it matches the renewal date you see in your registrar account.
• Login works: you can sign in to your registrar account and you see your .UK domain listed there.
• Contact details current: your email, phone and postal address in the registrar panel are correct today.
• Scripts moved: python3 rdap_check.py yourdomain.co.uk prints a status line and your registrar name, and your old WHOIS calls are either replaced or clearly marked as temporary.

If you want one quick sanity check that the RDAP address is still the official one, open the IANA root zone database page for .uk in your browser. At the time of writing (30 October 2026) it lists the RDAP base URL as https://rdap.nominet.uk/uk/ and shows - for the WHOIS server.

While your DNS settings are in front of you, it is also a good time to look at the secureDNS part of the RDAP answer. If you want to switch on DNSSEC, our guide to enabling DNSSEC and adding the DS record at your registrar walks through it.

Troubleshooting

WHOIS tool says it cannot find a server for .uk

Symptom: a WHOIS lookup for a .UK name that used to work now fails, or returns nothing useful, even before February 2027.

Cause: the IANA record for .UK no longer lists a WHOIS server (it shows a dash, and IANA lists it as last updated 4 August 2026). Tools that look up the server automatically have nowhere to go.

Fix: in the short term, point the tool at whois.nic.uk, as Nominet suggests. For the long term, switch to RDAP as in Step 3.

Script stops working on or after 9 February 2027

Symptom: from that date, a script or tool that still uses whois.nic.uk or another port 43 connection should be expected to stop getting answers, for example by timing out or failing to connect.

Cause: Nominet's planned retirement of port 43 WHOIS on 9 February 2027.

Fix: replace the WHOIS call with an RDAP request to https://rdap.nominet.uk/uk/domain/ plus the name. The script in Step 3 is a working starting point.

RDAP returns 404 for a domain

Symptom: you get {"errorCode":404,"title":"Domain example.com not found"} or a similar message with your domain name in it.

Cause: one of three things. The name is not a .UK domain, so the Nominet server does not hold it. You added www. to the front, for example www.bbc.co.uk, which also returns 404 because RDAP wants the registered name, not a host name. Or the name is simply not registered.

Fix: use the bare registered name, such as example.co.uk. For other endings, look up the right server in https://data.iana.org/rdap/dns.json.

Lookups start failing after many quick requests

Symptom: lookups worked, then started to fail after you ran a large batch.

Cause: RDAP servers can limit how fast clients query. RFC 9082 mentions rate limiting as one way servers protect themselves, and Nominet's RDAP terms prohibit high-volume automated use.

Fix: slow down, add a pause between lookups, only check domains you have a reason to check, and cache results instead of asking again every few minutes.

Script prints "registrar: (not shown)"

Symptom: the Step 3 script prints the status line but shows (not shown) for the registrar.

Cause: the script could not find an entity with the registrar role that has an fn line. In the answers I checked on 30 October 2026, the redacted fields were registrant details, and the registrar name was visible. So an empty result usually means the JSON has a different shape than expected.

Fix: run the Step 1 command and read the entities section by eye. You can also use the Lookup item on Nominet's site. If neither shows a registrar, contact Nominet's domain support, especially if you think you manage the domain directly with Nominet as described in Step 4.

When to ask for help

If you cannot work out who your registrar is, or your registrar says it does not hold your domain, contact Nominet. If a script is business critical and you do not maintain it yourself, send the message below to whoever does.

Quick tip: while you are checking renewals, our post on the .com wholesale price rise from 1 November covers how to review renewal prices across your other domains.

The one message worth forwarding

Copy this and send it to your developer, IT person or whoever looks after your domains:

Hi, heads up about our .UK domains. On 9 February 2027 Nominet retires port 43 WHOIS for .UK (RDAP replaces it) and all .UK domains must be managed through a registrar. Could you please: (1) confirm our registrar and expiry dates with curl -s https://rdap.nominet.uk/uk/domain/OUR-DOMAIN.co.uk | python3 -m json.tool, (2) check we can log in to the registrar and our contact email and phone are current, as the new .UK Registrant Terms ask for changes within 7 days, and (3) move any WHOIS scripts for .UK names to RDAP before February. Details: theukdomain.uk/rdap and theukdomain.uk/uk-standardisation. Thanks!

The takeaway: spend ten minutes now to find your registrar with RDAP, check your login, and retire any WHOIS scripts before 9 February 2027.