The 2026 round closes with more than 1,600 applications

ICANN's 2026 application window closed at the end of 12 August 2026, and with it the first chance in fourteen years to apply for a new generic top-level domain. ICANN announced on 13 August that it had received more than 1,600 primary applications across the roughly fifteen weeks the window was open.

It is a large number, and it arrived late: by ICANN's account the bulk of applications landed in the window's closing days, which is the same pattern the 2012 round produced. What follows is what the figures actually say, what is still provisional about them, and what happens next.

The window, in figures

Smaller than 2012, and that was expected

The instinct is to read a smaller number as weaker demand. That reading does not survive much contact with the two rounds' economics. The 2012 evaluation fee was $185,000; the 2026 fee is $227,000 plus conditional fees where they apply, and the programme now sits alongside registry obligations that did not exist in 2012. A round that clears 1,600 applications at that price is not a soft one.

The more interesting figure is the second one. More than 1,100 of the primary applications also carried a request for a replacement string — an alternative the applicant can fall back on under conditions the programme defines. That is roughly two in three applicants arriving with a plan B already filed, which tells you how many of them expect to land in contention with somebody else.

Why the number is still provisional

An application is not counted until ICANN has the money. The evaluation fee had to reach ICANN by 23:59 UTC on 19 August 2026, seven days after the window shut, and applications whose fees do not arrive drop out of the total. Until that settles and ICANN publishes its official statistics, every figure in circulation — including the ones above — is a provisional count that can move.

Administrative checks come next. ICANN expects to complete them for all applications in roughly eight weeks from the close of the window, subject to the volume it is actually working through.

The road to Reveal Day

What Reveal Day actually decides

Reveal Day is the first moment anybody outside ICANN sees the full field. Until then, applicants know their own strings and nothing about anyone else's. The publication does two things at once: it makes every surviving application public, and it exposes the contention sets — the strings more than one applicant wants.

Contention is the part worth watching. In 2012 the contested strings were the ones that took years and, in several cases, private auctions running into eight figures to resolve. The 1,100-plus replacement-string requests filed this round suggest a field that already expects a good deal of it.

Where internet.Best sits in this

internet.Best filed in this round, for ten strings across an AI cluster and a creator cluster — including .socialmedia, applied for on 12 August. Like every other applicant, we are waiting on the administrative checks and on Reveal Day to learn what we are contending with.

We will publish our own read of the field once ICANN does, including where our strings sit and what contention, if any, we are in.

Sources