.donate
Is .donate a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.donate is not contested. One applicant has said publicly that it applied to run it, and nobody else has, as of 15 August 2026. It is Link Freedom Group.
Useful label for donation pages and campaigns, but charities build their identity on .org, so it stays a side-door address.
nonprofits, charities, churches, and fundraising platforms that want a memorable giving-page address, typically as a campaign redirect alongside an established main site
In LFG's published list of 300+ strings submitted before the ICANN window closed on 2026-08-12. Their catalog tagline: “No cost, just value.”
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 exactly: a giving-verb sold as a call-to-action suffix to nonprofits and campaigns, where value depends on the string reading as a fundraising button rather than an organizational identity.
The gerund form of the identical wager — a philanthropy-action word aimed at the same charity/foundation/campaign buyer, monetized as donation-page and appeal-microsite real estate rather than primary corporate identity.
Same sector and same buyer pool with the same trust-signal premise, but it is the category noun an organization puts its identity on, whereas the target is an action word most naturally used as a transaction endpoint.
What a .donate domain is
.donate is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. One applicant has said publicly that it applied for .donate.
Is the .donate domain extension real yet?
.donate 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 .donate domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .donate name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .donate was .gives, delegated on .
Is .donate a real TLD?
Not yet. .donate is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant said publicly that it applied for .donate in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round. Every claim on this page links to its source.
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“.donate · Commerce · “No cost, just value.””Link Freedom Group
“LFG voluntarily published its full list of submissions ahead of ICANN’s official Reveal Day.”PR Newswire (Link Freedom Group)
“Top level domain registry Link Freedom Group (LFG) has disclosed more than 300 strings submitted as part of the ICANN new top level domain name program.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a clear action word with an obvious use: a donation landing page or campaign URL. But by analogy with charity-adjacent TLDs such as .charity, .foundation, .gives, and .ngo (analogy, outcomes qualitative: none displaced .org as the sector's identity namespace, and their aftermarkets have stayed thin), .donate is likely to be bought as a pointer, not a home. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no sign of sustained primary-identity demand: a serious nonprofit is unlikely to make something.donate its main address in the next 5 years, and an aftermarket built on redirect-style demand tends to be shallow. It is not in the 10-29 band because the buyer group is real and recurring rather than event-driven: charities, churches, universities, and fundraising platforms continuously need short giving URLs, so registrations on utility (not just price or novelty) are plausible at modest volume. Verified applicant context: the string was announced by Link Freedom Group, which filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and published its catalog before Reveal Day; its catalog lists .donate under Commerce with the tagline 'No cost, just value.' A portfolio applicant of that breadth suggests generic-registry distribution rather than a sector-partnership launch, which qualitatively caps early institutional adoption. Main market uncertainty: whether donation-processing and crowdfunding platforms adopt .donate for per-campaign vanity links, which would create volume demand well beyond one-off charity registrations and could lift it toward the strong-niche band.