.cause
Is .cause a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.cause is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Public Interest Registry.
A pleasant word for charity and advocacy campaigns, but nonprofits already have a trusted default, so .cause stays a side address.
nonprofits, advocacy groups and fundraising campaigns wanting a short campaign-site or giving-page address alongside their main domain
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 plain English abstract nouns for the nonprofit/advocacy space that a mission organization would put its primary identity on, betting that the sector's own vocabulary is worth more than .org to the same donor-facing registrants.
Same bet on an uncountable philanthropy noun read as a phrase completion by nonprofits and campaigns, but it names the donor's act rather than the thing being advocated for, so it skews fundraising where .cause skews issue identity.
Same campaign-microsite bet — an existing organization hangs a drive or appeal off the string rather than relocating its institutional home there — though the verb form makes it syntactically dependent on a strong left-of-dot brand in a way a standalone noun is not.
What a .cause domain is
.cause 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 .cause domain extension real yet?
.cause 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 .cause domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .cause name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .cause was .charity, delegated on 7 June 2018.
Is .cause a real TLD?
Not yet. .cause is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .cause is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Public Interest Registry · first recordedICANN
“PIR2624T-T82034 · Public Interest Registry · primary”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), near its top. The string is a clean English word that reads naturally for charity, advocacy and fundraising campaigns, and the record shows a single confirmed applicant, Public Interest Registry (ICANN application PIR2624T-T82034), with .volunteer recorded as a replacement string naming .cause as primary, which suggests a coordinated nonprofit-sector portfolio rather than a one-off. It is not in the 30-49 band because, by analogy (flagged), earlier nonprofit-themed TLDs such as .ngo, .charity, .gives and .foundation produced thin registration bases and little aftermarket; nonprofits overwhelmingly keep their primary identity on an established generic namespace and treat sector-specific strings as optional campaign or redirect addresses, and nothing in the verified facts points to a different dynamic here. It is not in the 1-9 band because the word has genuine campaign-site utility (a cause-branded microsite or giving page is a plausible, if secondary, use) and sector-aligned distribution could keep a modest, steady base of registrations rather than zero. Main market uncertainty: whether nonprofit-sector channels and bundling with existing registrations convert .cause into a routine secondary address at volume, or whether it stays an occasional vanity pick like its analogs; this matters more than the string itself.