.cartoon
Is .cartoon a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .cartoon in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Identity Digital named .cartoon as the replacement string of its .glasses application.
A playful, memorable label for animators and webcomic creators, but few serious studios would make it their main address.
independent cartoonists, webcomic and animation creators, and fan or hobby projects wanting a playful, self-describing address; occasionally animation studios for campaign or character microsites
No applications recorded for this TLD yet.
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.
Same bet as .cartoon: the creative industry's own plain word for its output, sold to studios, independent creators and fan/industry sites rather than to any one company, so it works only if a scattered production community treats a format noun as primary identity.
Also a format-of-entertainment noun owned by nobody, betting that creators and distributors of that content form will brand on the medium itself; it differs from .cartoon only in breadth, not in the kind of word or the kind of registrant.
A narrow genre noun carrying a creator-plus-fandom culture, the same bet that a niche art form's own name can anchor identities for practitioners and enthusiasts, though .hiphop leans more on community self-identification while .cartoon leans more on commercial studio and publisher use.
What a .cartoon domain is
.cartoon is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody has applied for .cartoon in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .cartoon domain extension real yet?
.cartoon is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. Nobody has applied for it on the public record; the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round is the process that would decide whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .cartoon domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .cartoon name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .cartoon was .film, delegated on 24 March 2015.
Is .cartoon a real TLD?
Not yet. .cartoon is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .cartoon as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
“VSL2635T-T54257 · Vocal Strange, LLC · replacement string of .glasses”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/joke/narrow), near its top. The string is a universally understood common word with a clearly defined creative community behind it, which is why it sits above the 1-9 band: cartoonists, webcomic authors, animation hobbyists and character-driven brands can plausibly want a name that announces the medium. It is not in the 30-49 band because, by analogy with other medium- and hobby-flavoured generic TLDs (for example .toys, .games, .art, .studio, .fun — analogy, not record), such strings tend to attract modest registration volumes driven by novelty and promotional pricing rather than sustained primary-identity use; established animation studios and syndicated cartoon properties overwhelmingly keep their primary identity on legacy namespaces and use descriptive strings, when at all, for side projects. Volume-at-price adoption and a working aftermarket are what would separate it from the band below, and I do not expect either to materialise at scale within 5 years. The verified record shows a single application, filed as a replacement string for a primary .glasses application, with no category tag and zero contention; that signals a low-contention launch with no competitive pressure, which neither raises nor lowers the string's market value but suggests adoption would depend heavily on the operator's own marketing rather than on organic demand. Main market uncertainty: whether the webcomic and indie-animation creator economy adopts self-describing domains as a recognised convention (as some creator niches have done with .art — analogy), which would lift .cartoon into usable-but-limited territory; absent that, it behaves as a vanity extension with event-driven spikes around animated releases and fan communities.