ICANN's new gTLD round, explained for brand owners

The application window for ICANN’s 2026 round of new generic top-level domains closed on August 12, 2026, and 1,616 applications are going forward. For brand owners and their legal teams, the questions that follow tend to be practical: what did applicants sign up for, what are the stages after the window, and what does the round leave unaddressed? This article answers each of those questions in order.

It does not assume you followed the round closely. It does assume you want to understand what ICANN delegates, what a registry agreement commits an operator to, and where ICANN’s authority stops. By the end, you will be able to place the round in context, follow the stages that come after the window, and see why a TLD carrying your brand string that was created onchain sits in a separate namespace the round does not touch.

1,616applications going forward in the round

USD 227,000expected evaluation fee per application

Noneannual renewal fee on a Freename TLD

Application count as reported by the trade press; evaluation fee from ICANN's new gTLD program pages; the absence of a renewal fee from the Freename registry.

What a gTLD is and who runs the process

Every address on the web resolves through the Domain Name System, the DNS, a hierarchy that translates human-readable names into the numerical addresses computers use. At the top of that hierarchy sits the DNS root, the authoritative record of which top-level domains exist and which operator answers for each one. The string that appears after the final dot in an address is the top-level domain, or TLD. A generic top-level domain, a gTLD, is one that is not a country code: it belongs to no state and is run under a contract with ICANN.

ICANN is the nonprofit body that coordinates the naming system of the public internet. It does not build websites, sell domain names to the public, or enforce trademark rights directly. What it does is set the rules for who may run a TLD, evaluate applications against those rules, and sign a registry agreement with each successful applicant. Once that agreement is in place and technical testing is complete, the string is added to the DNS root, and the TLD resolves across the public internet. That last step is called delegation.

The rules for a round are written into a document ICANN publishes for it, the Applicant Guidebook. It sets out the application questions, the requirements and the procedures that take an application from submission through evaluation. Anyone who wants to know precisely what an applicant committed to, or what the process allows a third party to do, starts there. This article describes the process in outline; the Guidebook, read with your own counsel, is the reference.

Three roles are worth keeping apart, because the round only concerns the first. A registry operator runs a TLD. A registrar sells names under TLDs to the public. A registrant holds a name. The round selects registry operators and nothing else.

Why rounds are rare

ICANN does not accept applications for new gTLDs continuously. It opens a window, closes it, and processes what came in. The 2026 round is the first in more than a decade, and between two rounds there is no standing procedure through which an organization can ask for a new string.

The interval is not an accident. The rules of a round are set by policy development inside the ICANN community, where governments, registries, registrars, civil society groups and intellectual property interests all take part. Each of those groups has something at stake in how strings are evaluated, how conflicts between applicants are settled and how trademark owners can object. Agreement among them takes time, and no application is accepted until the rules are settled and published.

There is also a structural reason. Adding a string to the DNS root is close to permanent. A TLD that fails after delegation leaves registrants, certificates and links behind it, so the process is built to test applicants before delegation and not after. A process designed around caution, consensus and long-term contracts does not lend itself to being run every year.

The practical consequence is simple. A round is an event, and an organization that did not take part in one has no parallel route into the DNS for a TLD of its own.

What an applicant applies for, and what a dotBrand is

An applicant does not buy a TLD the way it would buy a product. The application is a request for ICANN to designate the applicant as the registry operator of a specific string. If the application succeeds and the registry agreement is signed, the applicant becomes the operator of that TLD, responsible for its technical operation, its compliance with ICANN’s requirements and its continued viability.

Broadly, applications fall into two families. Open applications are for strings under which names are sold to the public through registrars: a sector word, a place, a community. The second family is the dotBrand: a string that corresponds to the applicant’s own trademark, run as a closed namespace. Under a dotBrand such as .yourbrand, the operator decides which names exist. Nobody outside the organization can register pay.yourbrand, because nobody outside it can register anything.

To qualify as a dotBrand, an application has to show that the string matches a trademark the applicant holds, and ICANN’s rules restrict how the TLD may then be used. In practice, most dotBrand operators use the TLD for their own purposes: consumer-facing addresses, internal services, or both. The glossary defines dotBrand, registry operator and the related terms if any of them needs unpacking, and the page on trademark TLDs explains the wider idea of a TLD that matches a mark.

What a dotBrand gives, and what it does not, is easier to read side by side.

The fourth row deserves a comment. A registry agreement is a contract to operate a string in the DNS. It is evidence of serious use of a name, and it may matter in a dispute, but it is not a trademark registration and it does not extend the mark to new countries or new classes. Trademark rules vary by country, and your own counsel decides what weight a delegation carries in a given jurisdiction.

The fee and the other commitments

The expected evaluation fee is USD 227,000 per application, as set out on ICANN’s new gTLD program pages. That sum covers ICANN’s cost of evaluating the application. It does not cover the advisers who help prepare it, and it does not cover the cost of operating the registry once the TLD is delegated.

The fee is per application, not per organization. A group that applied for its corporate name and for two product names filed three applications. Depending on the application, ICANN’s rules may also call for further evaluations that carry their own fees; the Guidebook is the place to check which apply.

The financial commitment does not end at application. A successful applicant signs a registry agreement and takes on the standing obligations of a registry operator. In outline, those include:

• maintaining the technical infrastructure that resolves names under the TLD, or contracting a registry service provider to do so
• signing the zone with DNSSEC, the security extension that lets a resolver verify that an answer is authentic
• providing a registration directory service and depositing registration data in escrow with a third party
• reporting to ICANN on a regular basis and paying ongoing registry fees
• meeting ICANN’s security and stability requirements for as long as the agreement runs

Most dotBrand applicants do not build this themselves. They retain a registry service provider, a specialist company that runs the technical platform for many TLDs. That turns a large engineering project into a service contract, but the contract is a recurring cost, and the obligations toward ICANN stay with the operator named in the agreement.

There is a third cost that rarely appears in a budget: attention. An application has to be prepared, answered for during evaluation and defended if someone objects. After delegation, someone inside the organization owns the relationship with the provider and with ICANN. A dotBrand is a standing commitment with ongoing costs, contractual obligations and internal governance, and the evaluation fee is its entry price, not its total.

What happens after the window closes

Closing the window ends submissions. It starts a sequence in which each application is checked, published, tested and, where necessary, weighed against competing applications. The description below carries no dates or durations: ICANN sets the calendar, and the calendar of one application depends on what happens to it along the way.

1. Completeness and paymentICANN confirms that each application is complete and that the evaluation fee is paid. Applications that do not clear this check do not go forward.
2. Publication of stringsICANN publishes the list of applied-for strings. This is Reveal Day, the first moment at which the public can see what was applied for.
3. Comments and objectionsThird parties, including trademark owners and governments, can comment on applications and, under the grounds the rules define, file a formal objection against one.
4. String evaluationThe string itself is examined: whether it is technically sound, whether it is confusingly similar to an existing TLD or to another applied-for string, and whether it raises a risk of collision with names already used on private networks.
5. Applicant evaluationThe organization behind the application is examined: its financial capacity, its operational and technical plan and, for a dotBrand, its eligibility to run the string as a brand TLD.
6. ContentionWhere two or more applications for the same or a confusingly similar string remain, only one can proceed. The rules provide the procedures for deciding between them, with an auction as the last resort.
7. Agreement and delegationThe successful applicant signs a registry agreement with ICANN. Once technical testing is passed, the string is added to the DNS root and the TLD is live.

Two of these stages carry most of the uncertainty for an applicant. The first is objection: an application that looked straightforward can meet a party with a competing claim to the string. The second is contention. A brand that applied for its own name may find that another organization with the same name, in another sector or another country, applied for it too. Trademark law lets identical marks coexist in different classes and territories. The DNS root does not: there is one .yourbrand, and one operator for it.

For that reason an application going forward is not the same as a delegation. The figure of 1,616 counts applications in the process, not TLDs that will exist at the end of it. Some will be withdrawn, some will lose a contention, and some will not pass evaluation.

What Reveal Day is and why it draws attention

Reveal Day is the day ICANN publishes the list of applied-for strings. It is the most watched moment in the public life of a round, because of what is not known before it. While the window is open, an application is a private matter between the applicant and ICANN. The public sees a count of applications, not the strings and not the organizations behind them.

Publication changes three things at once.

For applicants, it shows the contention picture. A brand that applied for its own name learns whether it is the only applicant for that string or whether it faces a contest.

For the market, it shows the shape of the round: which sectors applied, how many applications are dotBrands and how many are open strings meant for sale to the public, and which words drew several applicants.

For brand owners who did not apply, it is the point at which monitoring becomes possible. The list shows whether a third party applied for a string that is identical or close to your trademark, and that knowledge is what the comment and objection procedures depend on.

One caution about reading the list. A string that matches your name is not, by that fact alone, an application aimed at you. Many marks are ordinary words, family names or abbreviations shared by unrelated organizations, and an applicant with its own legitimate rights in the same word is a different situation from an applicant with none. The first reading of the list is a sorting exercise, and the conclusions come later, with counsel.

What running a DNS TLD involves afterwards

Delegation is the beginning of the obligation, not the end of it. A registry operator takes on requirements that last as long as the registry agreement, which is a long-term contract and not a one-time grant.

The technical requirements include running the authoritative name servers for the TLD, meeting the availability and response levels the agreement sets, signing the zone with DNSSEC and providing a directory service through which registration data can be looked up. These requirements apply whether the TLD carries a very large number of names or a handful used internally.

The compliance obligations run in parallel. The operator reports to ICANN at regular intervals, keeps a copy of its registration data in escrow with a designated provider, and answers to ICANN’s compliance function. An operator that does not meet its obligations can receive notices and, in the last resort, lose the agreement. A TLD in the DNS is held on conditions.

For a dotBrand used mainly for internal purposes, such as mail routing, authentication systems or service addresses, this overhead exists even if the public never sees a single address under the TLD. The provider contract, the staff time and the ICANN fees do not fall to zero because the namespace is small.

None of this is an argument against a dotBrand. It is the price of what the DNS offers: a namespace that every browser, mail server and certificate authority understands without any extra software, governed by rules that apply to every operator alike. An organization that wants that reach accepts the conditions that come with it. The useful question for a brand owner is whether it has a plan for the TLD that justifies a permanent operating commitment. An application made only so that nobody else could have the string leads to the same obligations as one made with a full program behind it.

For those who did not apply

If your organization did not submit an application, the window is closed and an application for this round can no longer be filed. Becoming the DNS registry operator of your own string through ICANN would mean a later round, and the timing of any later round is for ICANN to set. Nothing in your planning should assume one.

That does not leave you without a role in the round. There are three things a non-applicant can still do.

Read the published strings against your marks

The list of applied-for strings can be checked against your trademark portfolio: the house mark, the main product names, and close variants. The aim is to know whether any application touches a string you have rights in, and if so, who filed it and in which family of application it falls.

Use the procedures the round provides

If a third party applied for a string that conflicts with your trademark rights, the comment and objection procedures are the formal route inside the ICANN process. They include grounds based on existing legal rights, and objections are decided by bodies designated for that purpose. Whether an objection is available, worth filing and likely to succeed is a question for counsel who knows ICANN procedure.

Plan for the names sold under new open TLDs

Each open TLD that reaches delegation will sell names to the public. Some of those names will match trademarks. ICANN’s framework includes rights protection mechanisms for that situation, and the UDRP, the dispute policy that binds registrants of names under gTLDs through their registration contracts, applies to the new strings as it does to existing ones. A brand protection team does not need to register its mark under every new TLD. It needs a watching and enforcement policy that already accounts for more TLDs existing.

For strings that nobody applied for, the outcome is simpler: the DNS gains no TLD at that string from this round. That includes, in all likelihood, the names of most organizations in the world, since 1,616 applications is a small number against the number of trademarks in use.

What the round does not cover: names that exist onchain

ICANN’s authority extends to the DNS, the public naming system described above. It does not extend to onchain namespaces: naming systems built on blockchains, where a TLD is not an entry in the DNS root but a token, a unique record on a public ledger, held in a wallet.

Freename is one such registry: a TLD created there is a token recorded onchain and kept in its holder’s wallet. Where a dotBrand operator pays ICANN year after year, the holder of a Freename TLD owes no annual renewal fee, and nobody but that holder can issue names under the string. Such a TLD resolves through software that reads the blockchain, not through the DNS root. The two systems are technically independent. ICANN does not review, approve or constrain the strings created onchain, and a delegation of .yourbrand in the DNS gives no rights over an onchain TLD with the same string.

The consequence for brand owners is direct. The round settles who operates .yourbrand in the DNS. It says nothing about whether .yourbrand exists onchain, in whose wallet, or what names have been issued under it. For a brand that applied and succeeds, that success covers one namespace. For a brand that did not apply, the ICANN process covers neither.

It helps to be precise about what an onchain TLD is and is not. An ordinary browser does not open an onchain name without support, and that support is partial and changes over time. An onchain TLD is therefore not a replacement for a dotBrand, and for public web addresses and email the DNS is simply the better tool. What an onchain TLD does offer is a namespace in the environments that read it: names that resolve in supporting wallets, payments addressed to a name, websites reached through supporting browsers. The page on what is live sets out each capability that works, with its source and its limits, and the comparison of a dotBrand and an onchain TLD puts the two side by side on cost, control, reach and legal framework.

The legal position is also different in kind. The rights protection mechanisms of the DNS work because every registry and registrar is bound to ICANN by contract. An onchain registry is not a party to those contracts, so those mechanisms do not reach it. What remains is general trademark law, applied by the courts of the relevant country to the facts of the use. An onchain TLD that matches a mark and sits unused in a wallet raises different questions from one under which names are issued to deceive your customers. Your own counsel decides how to read either case.

So the question of the onchain string sits entirely outside the ICANN process. It starts with a fact that can be checked: the registry record is public, and anyone can look it up on a block explorer. Whether the string exists, and since when, is not a matter of opinion.

What to check once the round makes sense

The round and the onchain question call for two separate checks, and neither takes long.

The first is inside the DNS. Take your principal marks and read them against the published list of applied-for strings. If nothing touches them, the round asks nothing more of you than updating your watching policy for the open TLDs that will reach delegation. If something does, take it to counsel with the application details in hand.

The second is outside the DNS. For the same marks, establish whether a matching TLD exists onchain and whether names are issued under it. The free Namespace Exposure Score on this site scores how exposed a brand is onchain, and it is a reasonable first pass before any spending decision. If the picture is one you want to keep an eye on without acting, namespace watch is the monitoring service for the names of a brand onchain.

Where the check shows an onchain TLD matching your brand and you decide you would prefer to hold it, that is a private acquisition and not a dispute or an ICANN procedure. Hush Partners acts for organizations that mandate it to find and approach a holder, under a standard mutual NDA, with one named partner following the file from the first note to closing through onchain escrow on an aftermarket. The page for brands and legal teams is the starting point, and the desk is reached through the contact form on the site.

Whichever check comes first, record the result. A dated note of what was applied for in the DNS, what exists onchain and what you decided is the document your successor, or your counsel, will ask for.

Questions people ask

Does a delegation in the ICANN round give the operator rights over the same string onchain?

No. A registry agreement gives the operator the right to run a TLD within the DNS, under ICANN’s rules. It creates no rights in any other namespace, and the reverse is also true: holding an onchain TLD creates no claim to the same string in the DNS. Whether a brand has enforceable trademark rights against the use of an onchain TLD depends on trademark law in the relevant countries, not on the ICANN agreement.

Can a brand that did not apply still object to a third-party application?

Yes, within limits. The objection procedures of the round are open to third parties that can show one of the grounds the rules define. An objection based on trademark rights requires demonstrated rights in the string at issue, and it is decided by a designated body, not by ICANN staff. The Applicant Guidebook sets the procedure.

Does the UDRP apply to an onchain TLD?

Not by its own terms. The UDRP binds a registrant because the registration contract for a name under a gTLD incorporates it, and registrars are required to carry out its decisions. An onchain registry stands outside that chain of contracts. A dispute over an onchain name is a matter for general trademark law and, where they exist, the registry’s own policies.

How would a brand acquire an onchain TLD that matches its name?

An onchain TLD is a token held in a wallet, so acquiring it means reaching the holder and agreeing on a transfer. That is a private transaction. The service that covers it is described under brand namespace recovery, and the page on how a file runs sets out the stages from mandate to transfer. The fee for that work is a fixed amount, never a percentage, charged only to the client who mandates the desk.

Should a brand with a dotBrand application still look at the onchain string?

It is a separate decision, and a much smaller one. The dotBrand answers a question about the public internet. The onchain string answers a question about wallets and the applications built around them. A brand whose customers never use either may reasonably do no more than monitor. A brand active in payments or digital assets has more reason to know where its name stands in both.