.anime
Is .anime a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.anime is contested: 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are Toei Animation and Oinkadot. Intercap named .anime as a backup string for its .yes application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Who is applying, and what they run today
None of the two runs a TLD today.
Will names sell?
A natural home for anime fan sites, communities, and creators, but most anime businesses will likely keep mainstream domains.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .anime’s closest 2012 strings hold .moe 18K, .hiphop 1K and .music 27K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .moe, held 17,541 names, June 2026. .hiphop held 1,313; .music held 27,436. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet almost exactly: an insider word from the anime/otaku fandom's own vocabulary, sold as a badge of belonging to a self-identifying subculture rather than as an industry directory, so it only works if fans put their personal and community identity on it.
A genre-cum-culture noun owned by a scene rather than any company, betting that artists, fans and media outlets will all treat the string as an identity claim to a movement — the same dispersed, culture-first buyer profile as .anime.
Same shape of bet — an unownable creative-medium category noun that creators, distributors and fans could all plausibly claim — but pitched a full level broader (a whole art form, and a far more industry/rights-holder-contested one) than a single fandom-bounded genre.
anime fans, fan-community builders, indie creators, fan-art and episode-guide sites, and merch sellers targeting the anime audience; secondarily studios and streaming brands registering defensively.
What a .anime domain is
.anime is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .anime domain extension real yet?
.anime is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .anime domain?
You can’t yet. A .anime name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .anime was .moe, delegated on 31 March 2014.
Is .anime a real TLD?
Not yet. .anime is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .anime is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Intercap · first recordedICANN
- Toei Animation · first recordedICANN
- Oinkadot · now confirmedICANN
- Oinkadot · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
“OI2692T-T69849 · Oinkadot Inc · primary · contention set 2026-12 TA2664T-T61672 · TOEI ANIMATION CO., LTD. · primary · contention set 2026-12”ICANN
“IRI2679T-T72228 · Intercap Registry Inc. · replacement string of .yes · Deactivated OI2692T-T69849 · Oinkadot Inc · primary · contention set 2026-12 TA2664T-T61672 · TOEI ANIMATION CO., LTD. · primary · contention set 2026-12”ICANN
“A new partnership has applied for 25 top level domain names in this year's ICANN TLD expansion round.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. Anime is a large, passionate, global fan culture, so a semantically perfect string like .anime should draw steady hobbyist and community registrations, and the applicant context helps: Oinkadot is a partnership between Ray King (CEO of Porkbun) and Todd Han (CEO of Dynadot), both of whom run consumer registrars, which plausibly improves retail distribution and visibility at launch. But the buyers with money in this space, studios, licensors, streaming platforms, and large merch retailers, are brand-conservative and, by analogy with how fandom-oriented TLDs have played out, tend to stay on legacy domains while fan projects cluster on cheap or free namespaces (analogy: .moe, an anime-adjacent TLD, remained a niche fan namespace rather than a category standard; count and revenue figures unknown). That points to volume-and-price demand with a thin aftermarket, which is squarely this band. Not the band above (50-69) because genuine primary-identity use by serious, revenue-bearing projects looks likely to be sporadic rather than sustained, and the aftermarket for anime-related second-level strings is unproven, with fan culture historically favoring platforms (social media, wikis, Discord-style hubs) over standalone domains. Not the band below (10-29) because demand here is not merely event-driven or joke-driven: the fandom is durable, global, and produces a continuous stream of new sites, podcasts, communities, and small commerce ventures over any 5-year window, which supports real, if modest, registration volume. Main market uncertainty: whether anime-fandom web activity over the next 5 years happens on standalone domains at all, versus consolidating further onto platforms, which would cap this TLD at defensive and hobbyist registrations regardless of how well it is distributed.