.exam
Is .exam a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .exam, as of 7 October 2026. One applicant claimed it and is out. We keep the entry on the record either way.
- Journey To The West
A descriptive address for test-prep and certification sites; usable, but serious education brands will mostly stay on mainstream domains.
test-prep companies, tutoring and coaching centers, certification and proctoring providers, especially in exam-driven education markets; secondarily edtech speculators buying education keywords
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The gateway that once decided a nation's officials.”
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 open, single generic English noun from the learning vertical that no institution owns, sold to test-prep outfits, tutors and schools wanting a descriptive identity rather than a brand — the registry is betting the word itself carries the meaning.
Same bet in the credentialing half of education: a generic noun naming the assessment/qualification outcome, aimed at accrediting bodies and education marketers, and dependent on registrants accepting a keyword TLD in a category where .edu-style institutional trust already exists.
Also a generic education-product noun opened to any provider, but it names the thing being sold rather than the gate being passed, so the buyer skews commercial course-sellers instead of certification/assessment bodies.
What a .exam domain is
.exam is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Other. Nobody is chasing .exam today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .exam domain extension real yet?
.exam 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 .exam domain?
You can’t yet. A .exam name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .exam was .study, delegated on 25 February 2015.
Is .exam a real TLD?
Not yet. .exam is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .exam and is no longer in it. We keep the entry, and every entry on this page links to its source.
- Journey To The West · now abandonedICANN
- Journey To The West · first recordedJourney To The West Corporation
“.exam · Philosophy & Learning · “The gateway that once decided a nation's officials.””Journey To The West Corporation
- I place .exam in the 30-49 band (usable but limited). 'Exam' is a high-frequency dictionary word attached to a large global industry (test prep, certification, admissions), so registrations at volume are plausible and semantic pairings like bar.exam or entrance.exam are genuinely readable — which keeps it above the vanity band. But by analogy (flagged as analogy) to education-adjacent strings like .study, .degree, .courses and .academy, which drew real registrations without becoming primary-identity defaults or building meaningful aftermarkets, .exam is unlikely to reach the 50-69 band: serious edtech and testing bodies have historically anchored on .com or local ccTLDs, and adoption of a .exam identity would need explaining to consumers. The applicant is a Beijing-based portfolio filer with 323 submitted strings framed under 'Philosophy & Learning' with an imperial-examination cultural reference; that is a breadth strategy and gives no signal of anchor-tenant demand, which I treat neutrally but as no upward evidence. Main market uncertainty: whether the exam-prep sectors in exam-centric markets (e.g. India, China) adopt descriptive gTLDs for primary identity at all over the next 5 years, versus treating them as redirect or campaign domains.