.hat
Is .hat a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .hat in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. XYZ named .hat as the replacement string of its .cap application.
A narrow product-word ending: cute for headwear shops and hacker puns, but few serious projects would make .hat their main address.
headwear and apparel sellers, plus hobby and security-culture sites playing on "white hat" / "black hat" and "hat tip" phrases
No applications recorded for this TLD yet.
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.
Identical bet: a single wearable-product category noun whose primary registrants would be independent makers and specialty retailers hoping shoppers read the right-hand side as the product aisle, with no community or company behind the string to anchor it.
Same bet of a narrow accessory-product generic sold to makers and resellers, but the category's identity is dominated by heritage brands who already own their own names, so the generic has to fight for the merchant tail rather than the category itself.
Same bet at the same altitude — one artisanal physical product, buyers split between small builders and retail shops — differing only in that its trade has a hobbyist community to draw on while a hat string has none.
What a .hat domain is
.hat is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. Nobody has applied for .hat in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .hat domain extension real yet?
.hat 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 .hat domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .hat name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .hat was .shoes, delegated on 17 December 2013.
Is .hat a real TLD?
Not yet. .hat is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .hat as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- XYZ · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/joke/narrow). .hat is a single-product noun, and the closest analogies are the existing apparel and accessory product-word TLDs (.shoes, .clothing, .jewelry, .boutique and similar); by analogy those have stayed small, with primary-identity use rare and aftermarket activity thin, and nothing about headwear suggests a larger vertical than footwear or clothing. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no visible volume driver: the headwear retail segment is small, most sellers already operate on a .com or a marketplace storefront, and the string carries little credibility signal beyond novelty, so registrations would hinge on promotional pricing rather than organic demand (inference from analogy with other product-word TLDs). It is not in the 1-9 band because a real, if shallow, market exists: headwear and merch brands, cap/hat makers, and phrase-driven names from hacker culture (white hat, black hat, grey hat) and the "hat tip" idiom, which give a handful of memorable registrations and some event-driven interest. The applicant is recorded as XYZ.COM LLC with .hat as a replacement string for a primary .cap application; an operator with established registrar distribution raises the odds of broad channel availability and promotional volume, which is the main reason the score sits in the upper half of its band rather than the bottom. Main market uncertainty: whether the operator positions .hat as a cheap volume string (which could lift registration counts without lifting end-use credibility) or as a niche premium apparel ending, and whether the security-culture pun names attract any sustained serious use. All figures for analogous TLDs are unknown here; all comparisons above are qualitative inference from analogy.