1. OFFICIAL will be a premium dedicated destination where entities present themselves as “the” source of their products, services, and content . Registration is open and self-declared; enforcement of the "the" designation occurs through the rights protection mechanisms described below.
While registrations would be open without restriction, the .OFFICIAL namespace is expected to attract registrants seeking to establish a clear, stable home for their name and brand. These include brand owners, corporations, and trademark holders; educational institutions; nonprofit organizations; professional associations; sports teams, leagues, and fan clubs; media outlets and news organizations.
Registering a name in .OFFICIAL does not constitute legal, official, or governmental status, and registrants are solely responsible for the accuracy of their content. The registry operator is not a verification authority and does not arbitrate disputes between registrants and third parties; such disputes are resolved through the applicable dispute-resolution procedures (UDRP/URS) or applicable law.
Related activities already carried out (or planned for launch) include: registry service provider evaluations, technical readiness for DNS stability and DNSSEC, IDN support, and ensuring providers meet resolution-stability and response-time benchmarks. Required rights protection mechanisms will include the Trademark Clearinghouse, Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), and Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS).
Having served a decade as Registry Operator for the .CAM gTLD, we have gathered extensive experience in registry operations, registrar communication, user awareness campaigns, and TLD promotion. We will leverage this expertise to make .OFFICIAL a success. It is a priority to offer best practice operations, best-in-class technical infrastructure, and full compliance with Registry Operator policy. All registry operations would comply with applicable privacy, data protection, and other law, and registrants would be responsible for ensuring their use is lawful. To further protect registrants and internet users, we work alongside trusted DNS services like CleanDNS for spam handling, registry-lock services, and rapid takedown mechanisms to respond to malicious use.
Communication with registrars will commence as soon as possible to raise awareness and ensure an effective launch of the .OFFICIAL TLD. Registration would be open on a first-come, first-served basis after a prolonged 90-day Sunrise period followed by a Landrush period, giving intellectual property owners an opportunity to secure their names ahead of the general public. Outreach to brand protection networks and trademark holder communities will follow to support early adoption of .OFFICIAL. Attendance and participation at ICANN meetings and other relevant events are planned.
2. Registrants secure their own name — products, services, and content — in a namespace where self-declared identity is the point. Where multiple parties share a common possible name under many different sectors, the rights protection mechanisms described above govern competing claims. Organizations already invest in defensive registrations and trademark monitoring across existing TLDs; .OFFICIAL provides a dedicated space for such registrations, inherently why the purpose of .OFFICIAL would be sustainable over time.
The mission and purpose of .official is to give individuals, creators, and brands an open, generic namespace for personal and social branding — mirroring the everyday practice of appending "official" to a social media handle or account name to mark a person's or brand's primary presence, the same way someone might register "@janedoeofficial" to stand out from fan pages, parody accounts, or others sharing their name.
The applicant will drive adoption of .official through public relations outreach to creator economy and influencer marketing media, direct marketing to creators, influencers, and brands building a personal or public digital presence, partnership development with creator platforms and personal branding tools to secure anchor registrants, and coordinated promotion through the registrar channel to extend distribution and drive registration volume.
This purpose is sustainable over time because appending a distinguishing word to a common name in order to stand out in a crowded, shared namespace is a persistent digital identity behavior, independent of which specific social platform or technology is currently popular — as long as usernames remain limited and widely duplicated, people will keep reaching for suffixes like "official" to claim their corner of it.
The mission and purpose of the applied-for gTLD is to provide an open, generic and globally accessible namespace for businesses, organizations, communities, creators, projects, services and individuals wishing to establish a concise and memorable online address for a public-facing web presence.
The string is a common English word with broad online use. It frequently forms part of social media account names and similar online naming practices for public-facing accounts, pages, projects or websites. The applied-for gTLD is intended to make this familiar online naming convention available for domain names and websites.
The gTLD is intended to be operated as an open generic TLD. Registrations will not be limited to the applicant, its affiliates, or any single person or entity. Subject to applicable registry policies, ICANN requirements, rights protection mechanisms, and DNS abuse prevention and response measures, the namespace is intended to be broadly available through ICANN-accredited registrars to registrants worldwide.
The applicant’s activities to achieve this purpose will include operating the TLD through an experienced Registry Service Provider, maintaining registrar relationships, implementing applicable ICANN policies and rights protection mechanisms, publishing clear registration and abuse policies, supporting launch phases such as Sunrise, Early Access and General Availability, and promoting the TLD through established registrar channels.
The purpose is sustainable over time because it is based on a broad, non-exclusive, open generic use case, a familiar online naming convention, an experienced registry operator, an established Registry Service Provider model, and a pricing structure designed to support both standard registrations and premium names.
iRegistry GmbH has more than ten years of gTLD registry experience, currently operates .RICH under an active Registry Agreement with ICANN and successfully operated .ONL from its delegation in 2014 until its transfer to Jolly Host, LLC, an Identity Digital company, effective 1 March 2026. The applicant will use this operational experience, its existing registrar relationships and its compliance processes to support the long-term stable operation of the applied-for gTLD.
Link Freedom Group (LFG) aspires to become a best-in-class, vertically integrated domain name registration authority, see linkfreedomgroup.link. This TLD is part of a carefully curated portfolio of strings that LFG intends to pursue in ICANN’s 2026 New gTLD Program. In assembling this portfolio, LFG focused on securing meaningful, memorable, and commercially compelling strings that resonate strongly with end users and offer long-term growth potential.
Over the past four years, LFG (Nova Registry) has successfully grown its flagship TLD, .LINK, from approximately 125,000 to more than 300,000 domains under management. This growth has been driven by innovative distribution strategies, the expansion of registrar partnerships, and a granular pricing model that has enabled .LINK to remain competitively priced while avoiding the significant fee increases implemented by some other registry operators.
LFG’s experience in the domain name industry has reinforced one of the key lessons from the 2012 application round: long-term sustainability is strengthened through portfolio diversification. By spreading operational costs and mitigating revenue fluctuations across multiple TLDs, LFG is better positioned to withstand market volatility and invest in continued growth. Accordingly, LFG believes that even obtaining a subset of the TLDs for which it has applied will establish a diversified portfolio capable of supporting long-term economic stability, operational resilience, and sustainable growth.
1. Mission and purpose: The mission of .official is to give organizations and public figures a naming option that follows a convention they already use online: labelling one channel as the official one to distinguish it from unaffiliated pages. Intended registrants include brands, artists, athletes, public figures, clubs and institutions that already use the word in naming their own channels and pages. Intended users are the audiences, customers and members of the public looking for information published by those registrants under their own name. Following delegation, the applicant will, as registry operator of the .official TLD, conduct a phased launch, implement all ICANN-required rights protection mechanisms, and distribute the TLD through ICANN-accredited registrars, supported by marketing and outreach to build awareness and adoption among the intended registrant and user groups. The TLD will be operated under a comprehensive DNS abuse prevention and mitigation framework covering the full range of abuse types, combining proactive and reactive controls. Abuse reports will be investigated and actioned in line with applicable policy requirements. The objective is to maintain .official as a high-quality, trusted namespace for registrants and end users.
2. Sustainability: The "official" convention is already entrenched across social platforms, app stores, storefronts and media, where organizations and public figures routinely label one channel as the official one. The number of channels each entity maintains keeps growing, so demand for that naming convention is structural rather than tied to any trend.
The mission of .OFFICIAL is to provide a namespace associated with the concept of official as something identified or designated as approved, recognized, or authoritative by the relevant person or entity. The .OFFICIAL gTLD is intended to serve a broad range of registrants and users, including individuals, businesses, organizations, communities, projects, and other entities that identify with, relate to, or wish to be associated with the concept represented by the applied-for string.
The purpose of .OFFICIAL is to enable registrants to establish online identities using domain names that correspond to this concept. To achieve this purpose, Vinyl Strings, LLC will make .OFFICIAL available for registration through registrars and other appropriate distribution channels; maintain a secure, stable, and reliable registry infrastructure; implement registration and operational policies that support the availability, security, and integrity of the namespace; and provide ongoing administration of the gTLD to enable registrants to register and use domain names within the namespace.
The purpose of .OFFICIAL is sustainable over time because things identified or designated as approved, recognized, or authoritative by the relevant person or entity will continue to play a fundamental and enduring role across society. As society evolves, organizations and individuals will continue to establish online identities associated with the applied-for string.
The mission and purpose of the .official gTLD is to provide an open, international namespace that formalises a naming convention already widespread online: the use of the word “official” to mark a genuine, primary presence — as seen in social-media handles and “official account” labels. .official gives individuals, brands, organisations and creators a natural home, in the form [name].official, for the official presence they promote on social networks.
Open, non-discriminatory model. The TLD will be operated on an OPEN basis, with registration available to the general public through ICANN-accredited registrars on published terms applied equivalently to all registrars, consistent with the Registry Operator Code of Conduct (Specification 9). The registry does NOT operate an identity- or officialness-verification scheme, and it does not — and could not fairly — rank one registrant as more “official” than another. Registration is available on equal terms, internationally, to individual, private and public operators alike.
How credibility is supported. Rather than through verification, the quality and credibility of the namespace are supported by two mechanisms that the registry applies on a non-discriminatory basis: (i) a deliberately premium price point, which filters out casual, bulk and speculative registration and raises the cost of abuse; and (ii) rigorous, well-resourced abuse management — proactive monitoring and rapid response to impersonation, phishing and other DNS abuse, going beyond the baseline required by Specification 11. Together these keep the namespace clean and make an established .official presence a meaningful signal, without the registry asserting that it has verified any registrant.
Intended registrants are individuals, brands, organisations, public figures and creators who maintain an official public presence — particularly on social networks — and want a matching, memorable web address. The users are the audiences and customers who follow those presences online and benefit from a consistent, well-policed namespace.
Planned activities include: (i) a launch program compliant with Specification 7 (Sunrise and Trademark Claims via the TMCH); (ii) premium pricing; (iii) a strong, published anti-abuse and anti-impersonation policy with rapid takedown, which the applying entity intends to commit as a Registry Voluntary Commitment; and (iv) distribution through accredited registrars, aligned with social-media naming practices.
The purpose is durable because the “official presence” naming convention is already established and continues to grow with social-media adoption worldwide, independent of any single platform. The premium price sustains a high-quality, low-abuse namespace over time, and the abuse-management commitment sustains its credibility. The applying entity, XRegistry Inc., is part of the Xserver group, whose infrastructure, distribution and financial resources support long-term operation, while all Critical Functions (DNS, DNSSEC, EPP, RDDS, Data Escrow) are provided by Identity Digital, an ICANN pre-evaluated Registry Service Provider."
1. Mission and purpose. This gTLD will be operated as an open, unrestricted generic top-level domain. Its purpose is to expand naming choice in the DNS by making this term available at the top level for any lawful use chosen by the registrant. Registrations will be available to all registrants on a first-come, first-served basis through ICANN-accredited registrars, subject only to the Registry Agreement, ICANN Consensus Policies, and applicable law. The applicant will not operate this gTLD on an exclusive basis.
2. Intended registrants and users. Intended registrants are individuals, businesses, and other organizations worldwide seeking a short, meaningful domain name. There are no eligibility or name selection restrictions beyond those required by the Registry Agreement, ICANN Consensus Policies, and applicable law. Intended users are internet users worldwide who access domain names registered in this gTLD.
3. Related activities. The applicant is an established registry operator under contract with ICANN for 35 gTLDs, including .xyz. It has in place a qualified Registry Service Provider, distribution agreements with ICANN-accredited registrars across multiple regions, and all required rights protection mechanisms and DNS abuse mitigation practices. For this gTLD the applicant will onboard the TLD to its existing registry platform, conduct a Sunrise Period and Trademark Claims Period, launch General Availability through its registrar channel, and maintain ongoing registrar enablement, abuse monitoring, and compliance reporting.
4. Sustainability. Operation is funded by recurring registration and renewal revenue and does not depend on any single registrant, sector, or campaign. This gTLD will run on the applicant's existing shared registry infrastructure, so incremental operating cost is low and no minimum registration volume is required for viability. The applicant has operated gTLDs continuously since 2014.