A plain-English look at ICANN's new extension round, and what it means if you buy names.

This week ICANN published the full list of applications for its first new extension round since 2012. There are 1,615 of them, and 333 come from brands. For the first time, you can see who wants what.

I've been calling it the TLDFight. TLDFight.com, anyone? After this week, the name fits pretty well.

So where's the actual fight?

263 extensions have more than one applicant. The loudest is .agent, with 13 applications. Google's registry arm, Meta, and OpenAI are all on that list, along with Radix, XYZ.COM, and eight others. .agi has 7.

Back in 2012, a crowded extension often went to a private auction, and the losers split the winner's money. That's banned now. If applicants can't settle by switching to a backup name or dropping out, it goes to an ICANN auction.

A few things stood out to me:

  • It wasn't cheap to get in. Domain Incite reports the fee was $227,000, and 47 applications never paid it.
  • The field is lopsided. 864 applications come from North America, 506 from Europe, and just 16 from Africa.
  • Applicants can switch to a backup name from October 8 to 21. The final list locks on November 17.

But will anyone use them?

That's the part that gets skipped, and the numbers are mixed.

According to the DNIB Q2 2026 report, new extensions now have 52.9 million registrations, up 34% from a year ago. That's real growth. But the latest renewal estimate for them is about 31%, while .com is at roughly 75%. Two of the biggest, .xyz and .top, are under 19%. People try these names, but a lot of them don't get kept.

Sales look similar. In DN Journal's latest chart, 13 of the top 20 sales were .ai names, led by Act.ai at $375,000. Yet the biggest sale of all was Mogul.com, a .com, for $1.3 million.

New extensions are fighting hard, but when real money is on the table, buyers still lean toward .com.

What I take from it

Buyers are curious about new extensions, but when real money is on the table, they still lean toward .com. I also suspect the name matters more than the ending. In my last CircleID piece, I wrote that AI answer engines seem to favor distinctive names. A generic extension doesn't give an AI much to hold on to. A memorable name does.

So if you're buying, ask whether the name would still stand out without the extension. If you're investing, remember that thirteen bidders only prove that thirteen companies want to run it. It doesn't prove anyone will use it.

The real fights come later, when the auctions start. I'll keep watching.

I also wrote a longer version of this for CircleID: The TLD Fight Is On: 1,615 Applications, and One Question Nobody Is Asking (original on CircleID).

Which side are you on, new extensions or .com? Tell me.

#TLDFight #DomainInvesting #ICANN #Domains #NewgTLD