.culture
Is .culture a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.culture is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Identity Digital. Radix named .culture as a backup string for its .brand application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Make A Difference Institute Limited named .culture as a backup string for its .lab application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Cam Connecting SARL named .culture as a backup string for its .gaming application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
A pleasant, broad word that reads well after a dot, but few organisations would choose it as their main web address.
arts and cultural organisations, festivals, media and lifestyle brands built around "culture", and workplace-culture or HR startups wanting a descriptive second address
Named on the ICANN gTLD application list, 7 October 2026 as a replacement (backup) string of the applicant's .gaming application, shown as deactivated: another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup
Named on the ICANN gTLD application list, 7 October 2026 as a replacement (backup) string of the applicant's .lab application, shown as deactivated: another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup
Named on the ICANN gTLD application list, 7 October 2026 as a replacement (backup) string of the applicant's .brand application, shown as deactivated: another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup
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: an abstract, uncountable high-culture noun that no single company can own, sold to a diffuse non-commercial constituency (institutions, galleries, practitioners, funders) whose members must be willing to put their primary identity on a sector word rather than a product word.
The same generic cultural abstraction carried in a Romance-language form, so the bet is identical in kind but narrower in reach — it depends on a language community adopting an untranslated sector word as its own cultural address.
Also an abstract mass noun with no bounded registrant class and no trade behind it, so it wins or loses on the same condition as .culture — that editorial, institutional and umbrella-brand buyers will pay for a mood word they cannot claim exclusively — though its buyer skews commercial-media rather than civic.
What a .culture domain is
.culture 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 .culture domain extension real yet?
.culture 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 .culture domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .culture name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .culture was .art, delegated on 23 June 2016.
Is .culture a real TLD?
Not yet. .culture is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .culture is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
“CCS2640T-T43697 · Cam Connecting SARL · replacement string of .gaming · Deactivated MADI2580-T89840 · Make A Difference Institute Limited · replacement string of .lab · Deactivated RTIS2674T-T83546 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · replacement string of .brand · Deactivated SS2654T-T30625 · Hair Apparent, LLC · primary”ICANN
“Radix has applied for these TLDs; we do not own or operate them today.”Radix
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string is a real, widely understood generic word that composes naturally as a phrase (pop.culture, street.culture, company.culture), so registrations should happen at modest volume and some end-use is plausible from arts bodies, festivals, lifestyle media, and HR or workplace-culture products. It is not in the 50-69 band because "culture" is abstract rather than a category people shop or search in: the natural buyers (museums, theatres, ministries, media brands) already hold strong .org, .com or country-code identities and have little reason to move their primary address, so adoption would need explaining and the aftermarket is likely thin outside a handful of short dictionary phrases. It is not in the 10-29 band because demand is not event-driven or joke-based; a generic cultural-sector word has a durable, if small, pool of fitting projects over the next 5 years. By analogy (flagged as analogy): .art has shown that an arts-adjacent generic can sustain genuine niche use with pricing-driven volume, while narrower sector strings such as .museum, .gallery and .theater have seen far weaker primary-identity uptake; .culture sits closer to the latter in specificity of buyer pull but with a broader, more phrase-friendly word. The record shows a single confirmed applicant, Hair Apparent, LLC, with no category tag recorded; the applicant's registry strategy, pricing and channel reach are unknown, and that is the main market uncertainty — whether the string is marketed broadly as a lifestyle word or narrowly to the cultural sector decides whether it reaches the top of this band or stays near the floor.