.friend
Is .friend a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .friend in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Radix named .friend as a backup string for its .founder application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. NextGEN TLDs GmbH named .friend as a backup string for its .track application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
A warm, memorable word for social apps, pet brands and fan pages, but few serious projects would make it their main address.
social and community apps, pet and companion brands, dating and friendship services, fan clubs and personal pages wanting a friendly vanity address
No applications recorded for this TLD yet.
Named on the ICANN gTLD application list, 7 October 2026 as a replacement (backup) string of the applicant's .track 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 .founder 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: a warm abstract relational noun with no natural registrant class, where demand has to be manufactured out of sentiment and social gesture rather than an existing industry that already calls itself by the word.
Same bet of selling a human-bond word as mass-market personal identity to anyone, though the kin noun has a real commercial registrant base (family businesses, family offices) that a word for a voluntary peer tie does not.
Same bet on social-network vocabulary — a word whose value depends on social-graph behavior and platform-era affinity rather than any trade, place, or category of business that would put its primary identity there.
What a .friend domain is
.friend is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody has applied for .friend in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .friend domain extension real yet?
.friend 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 .friend domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .friend name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .friend was .love, delegated on 2 April 2015.
Is .friend a real TLD?
Not yet. .friend is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .friend as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
“NTG2671T-T43826 · NextGEN TLDs GmbH · replacement string of .track · Deactivated RTIS2674T-T11900 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · replacement string of .founder · Deactivated”ICANN
“NTG2671T-T97122 · NextGEN TLDs GmbH · primary”ICANN
“Radix has applied for these TLDs; we do not own or operate them today.”Radix
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). .friend is a common English noun with a warm connotation, which gives it memorability and a plausible vanity use (best.friend, dog.friend, pen.friend), but the word carries no category authority: there is no industry, profession or product class for which 'friend' is the natural namespace, so demand would be whim- and event-driven rather than sustained primary-identity use. By analogy (inference from analogy, no figures asserted) to relationship- and sentiment-themed TLDs such as .love, .family, .dating and .social, such strings tend to build modest registration bases on promotions with a thin aftermarket where a few dictionary-word pairs attract real money while the long tail does not; the same pattern is likely for .friend over the next five years. It is not in the 30-49 band because it lacks even a clear volume or price-driven use case (no obvious community, hobby or vertical defaults to it) and resale would hinge on a handful of lucky word combinations. It is not in the 1-9 band because the word is universally understood, pleasant and brandable for social, pet, companion-AI and fan-community projects, so a real if shallow market exists. On the record, two applications exist, both standard type and both deactivated (NextGEN TLDs GmbH as a replacement string of .track; Radix as a replacement string of .founder); scoring assumes delegation and general availability regardless. Main market uncertainty: whether companion-AI and social-app branding adopts 'friend' as a product-category word strongly enough to lift it from vanity toward a recognised niche.