.forbidden
Is .forbidden a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .forbidden, 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 novelty word ending for edgy or mythic branding; memorable in a few phrases, but rarely a serious project's main address.
novelty and edgy-branding buyers — adult, horror, gaming and entertainment projects wanting a taboo-flavored phrase (e.g. fruit.forbidden), plus a small collector crowd; not a workhorse namespace for mainstream businesses
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The palace once closed to all but the emperor.”
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: a suggestive adjective sold purely on connotation rather than to any defined registrant class, adult-adjacent without being the regulated adult category, so it depends on impulse and novelty registrations plus edge-brand defensive plays rather than anyone putting a primary business identity on it.
Same bet in a milder register: an evocative participle-adjective from the expressive-string bucket with no anchor tenant, profession, or industry behind it, monetized by wordplay completion of the phrase rather than by owning a category.
Same bet on transgression as the product itself, where the string's whole value is the attitude it signals, drawing curiosity registrations and edgy microsites but few renewal-generating primary identities.
What a .forbidden domain is
.forbidden is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody is chasing .forbidden today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .forbidden domain extension real yet?
.forbidden 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 .forbidden domain?
You can’t yet. A .forbidden 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 .forbidden was .sexy, delegated on 14 November 2013.
Is .forbidden a real TLD?
Not yet. .forbidden is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .forbidden 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
“.forbidden · Imperial & Myth · “The palace once closed to all but the emperor.””Journey To The West Corporation
- I place .forbidden in the 10-29 vanity/novelty band, at the lower-middle of it. The string is an English adjective that only works right-of-dot in a handful of set phrases (forbidden fruit, forbidden city, forbidden zone), which caps demand at event-driven or gimmick registrations; by analogy, adjective/evocative gTLDs like .sucks, .fail or .wtf drew attention-driven registrations but little sustained primary-identity use, and I infer .forbidden would track that pattern or weaker since it lacks even their sentence-completing grammar. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no identifiable buyer group that would register at volume or treat it as a usable default, and no plausible aftermarket beyond a few phrase hacks; it is above the 1-9 band because taboo-flavored branding in adult, horror and gaming niches gives it a real if shallow novelty market over the next 5 years. The applicant is a Beijing-based portfolio applicant (323 submitted strings, 'Imperial & Myth' category), which suggests a themed catalog play; portfolio-scale operation says little either way about dedicated marketing for this one string. Main market uncertainty: whether English-speaking buyers read a bare adjective right-of-dot as a brandable suffix at all, or whether the phrase-hack appeal (fruit.forbidden) stays a curiosity that produces almost no renewals.