Resistance is futile: .borg is on the list, along with .itiswhatitis, .therapy, and.hype. If that’s scary, might a cup of .tea help?
ICANN is poring through over 1,600 applications for new global top-level domains (GTLDs) and will reveal which ones it thinks are valid in a few weeks – but hundreds of names applicants hope to secure have already appeared online.
GTLDs are the last part of an internet address. The most common and well-known are .com, .net, and .org. In the early 2000s, ICANN allowed a few more GTLDs, and in 2012 ran an open application process that allowed anyone to pay for the privilege of operating their own GTLD.
That program saw over 1,900 applications and led to the creation of over 1,200 new GTLDs. Tech companies, including Microsoft, Cisco, and Oracle, scored their own GTLDs. One registry applied for, and won, .sucks – one of many novelty domains that ICANN approved.
As The Register reported in May, ICANN this year opened a round of applications for GTLDs and recently announced that it received over 1,600 submissions. The internet governance organization plans a “Reveal Day” in September or October, on which it will publish a list of all applications that have passed administrative checks.
Some applicants have jumped the gun and published the list of GTLDs they applied for. The Link Freedom Group has applied for 316 GTLDs, listed here.
Among the strings it hopes to turn into GTLDs are .slop, .therapy, and .hype. The outfit also hopes to own .con, .token, and .moon, plus AI-related strings including “agentic” and “AGI”.
An unofficial ICANN community Wiki, which The Register understands some applicants have used to share the GTLDs they desire, offers the chance to filter GTLDs in the 2026 application and lists the names sought by Link Freedom Group plus hundreds more. Predictably enough, many are strings related to cryptocurrencies, datacenters, and AI, or locations in China.
ICANN charged an evaluation fee of $227,000 for each submission, and the cost can be higher if a desired string needs extra review due to being considered a highly risky GTLD.
It can take months or years for new GTLDs to go live after Reveal Day, because ICANN performs additional reviews and operates a 104-day window in which it considers objections. If you want a domain using any of the GTLDs mentioned above, it’s unlikely registries will be ready to sell you one before late 2027 – and likely rather later than that. ®
