For the first time in fourteen years, anyone with enough money and a good enough idea can ask ICANN for a brand-new ending to the internet. The application window for the 2026 New gTLD Program opened back in April and closes August 12, giving prospective applicants less than two weeks left to get in. Miss it, and the wait for the next chance stretches indefinitely, since the last round back in 2012 created most of the domain endings the internet still runs on today.
Getting in isn’t cheap. According to the Applicant Guidebook ICANN published in December 2025, the evaluation fee runs $227,000 per application, covering one primary string, up to four variants, and every required evaluation through roughly mid-2030, a timeline that says a lot about how long this process actually takes from application to a working domain.
Payment is due fast too: ICANN needs the full amount within seven days of the window closing, or it cancels the application outright. There’s some relief for smaller applicants through an Applicant Support Program offering reduced fees, though extra costs apply for special cases like .brand designations.
The geographic rules are strict, and they’re already causing friction. The guidebook bans country and territory names outright in any language, which puts India’s proposed .india and .bharat endings on a direct collision course with those rules. Applicants can pursue city names, but only with documented government support, plus an additional geographic review layered on top of standard evaluation.
That brings up the round’s most interesting story so far: .bali. Bali’s governor, Wayan Koster, has backed a bid for a Bali-specific domain ending, with a formal announcement expected at ICANN’s October meeting, held in Bali itself after the event relocated from Oman over security concerns. There’s a timing quirk worth noting, though. The application window closes August 12, well before that October announcement, meaning any serious bid for this round had to already go in before anyone heard about it publicly.
Once the window closes, ICANN will publish the full list of applied-for strings, the moment everyone finds out which companies, cities, and entrepreneurs actually put $227,000 down. For hosting providers and registrars, that published list matters twice over: it’s future inventory worth watching, and it’s an early signal of which domain names relevant to their own customers just got claimed by someone else.
