.archive
Is .archive a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.archive is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Identity Digital.
A clean descriptive word for archives and collections, but most would-be users already live on an institution's domain; niche at best.
archives, libraries, heritage collections and fan or research preservation projects that want a "name.archive" identity, plus backup and data-retention products looking for a descriptive secondary address
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Both are single generic function nouns naming the act of keeping things safe over time, sold to service providers whose whole identity is custody of other people's stuff, so the bet rests on an industry adopting a utility verb-noun rather than on any brand or community owning it.
Same bet shape on the institutional side: a category noun that a class of memory/culture institutions would put its primary identity on, where success depends on thousands of small independent institutions each wanting the category word as their address.
Both are abstract mass nouns describing holdings rather than an industry or a product, a bet that an infrastructure-flavoured word attracts both technical custodians and anyone wanting a credible-sounding repository, with no natural registrant community to anchor it.
What a .archive domain is
.archive is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .archive domain extension real yet?
.archive 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 .archive domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .archive name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .archive was .storage, delegated on 18 December 2015.
Is .archive a real TLD?
Not yet. .archive is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .archive is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
“ASL2693T-T29242 · Agador Slip, LLC · replacement string of .vintage ASL2693T-T32133 · Agador Slip, LLC · replacement string of .engine”ICANN
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string is a real dictionary noun with a natural reading grammar ("something.archive" = "the something archive"), which gives it a plausible set of end users: institutional archives, digital-preservation projects, fan and research collections, newspaper morgues, and backup or data-retention products. The record shows one confirmed application (Agador Slip, LLC) and no category tag; nothing on the record speaks to registration policy or pricing, so those are unknown. It is not in the 50-69 band because the natural buyers are mostly units inside a larger institution (a university, a public library, a company) whose primary identity is already fixed on the parent's domain; by analogy, sponsored cultural-sector strings such as .museum are widely regarded as having drawn very little adoption even with a clear constituency, and descriptive collection-type strings such as .gallery and .photos settled into low-volume niche use rather than becoming a category default (inference from analogy, no figures asserted). It is not in the 10-29 band because the word is neither a joke nor a narrow event term: it describes a durable function, reads well as a primary identity for standalone preservation projects, and would be a sensible address for consumer-facing "personal archive" or web-archiving services, so some genuine non-vanity use is likely over the next 5 years. Aftermarket value is expected to be thin: few short keywords pair with "archive" in a way an investor would pay a premium for, and the TLD itself adds descriptive clarity rather than credibility. Main market uncertainty: whether standalone preservation projects and creator-run collections (the only buyers who would use it as a primary identity) are numerous enough to sustain demand, versus the word being used almost entirely for secondary, redirect-style addresses by institutions that keep their main identity elsewhere.