.heal
Is .heal a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .heal in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Squarespace named .heal as a backup string for its .gym application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. ShortDot named .heal as a backup string for its .mcp application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Link Freedom Group named .heal as a backup string for its .portal application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Nobody has applied for .heal in its own right.
Will names sell?
A feel-good web ending for wellness and recovery brands; nice for a name, but most serious health projects will pick a safer address.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .heal’s closest 2012 strings hold .rehab 2K, .care 48K and .health 61K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .rehab, held 2,343 names, June 2026. .care held 47,784; .health held 61,435. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a short, ungated English word for the process of getting better, sold as primary identity to treatment centers, therapists and recovery programs whose credibility comes from the outcome word rather than any registry-enforced credential.
Same bet in shape — a warm generic caregiving verb-noun that any practitioner, facility or campaign can adopt as its whole identity — but its buyer pool spreads well past medicine into services and causes, where .heal stays tethered to health outcomes.
Chases the same buyer pool from the same vertical, but it is the category label a directory registry sells while .heal is the action/outcome word bought for emotional resonance, so the pitch and the registrant mix differ even where the market overlaps.
Where they meet elsewhere
Link Freedom Group and ShortDot face each other in 19 contests this round, .heal included.
- Link Freedom Group × ShortDot
- Link Freedom Group × Squarespace
- ShortDot × Squarespace
wellness startups, therapy and recovery services, holistic practitioners, and health-adjacent consumer brands wanting an emotive verb-style name
What a .heal domain is
.heal is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Other category. Nobody has applied for .heal in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .heal domain extension real yet?
.heal 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 .heal domain?
You can’t yet. A .heal 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 .heal was .rehab, delegated on 4 June 2014.
Is .heal a real TLD?
Not yet. .heal is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .heal as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Squarespace · first recordedICANN
- ShortDot · now deactivated backupICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now deactivated backupICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now abandonedICANN
- ShortDot · now abandonedICANN
- ShortDot · now announced
- ShortDot · first recordedShortDot (Ireland) Limited
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“LFGL2683T-T30117 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .portal · Deactivated NA2626T-T80159 · ShortDot (Ireland) Limited · replacement string of .mcp · Deactivated SRL2616T-T74615 · Squarespace Registry LLC · replacement string of .gym · Deactivated”ICANN
“ShortDot (Ireland) Limited has submitted 40 applications to ICANN's 2026 New gTLD Program. The 80 strings shown include applied-for and designated replacement strings across ShortDot's 40 ICANN applications, presented without revealing their status or pairing.”ShortDot (Ireland) Limited
“.heal · Lifestyle · “Heal, recover, thrive.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The health and wellness vertical is large and durable, and .heal is a short, emotionally positive English verb that composes naturally into brandable names (e.g. a clinic or app using a name.heal construction as its identity). But by analogy with existing health-adjacent TLDs, verb and lifestyle strings in this space have tended to produce modest registration bases driven by defensive and hobbyist buys rather than primary-identity adoption, and the noun-form .health analog occupies the category-standard position .heal would need to displace; that inference is from analogy, since specific volumes are unknown. Regulated and trust-sensitive health buyers also skew conservative in naming, which dampens primary-identity use for a soft verb string. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no evidence of sustained demand or a real aftermarket for this specific string, and its best-fit buyers have credible incumbent alternatives; it is not in the 10-29 band because the underlying wellness market is genuinely large, the string is a common positive word rather than a joke or event-driven term, and some serious consumer wellness brands plausibly would use it as a primary identity. The applicant, Link Freedom Group, filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and lists this string under a 'Lifestyle' category with the tagline 'Heal, recover, thrive.'; a large-portfolio applicant is stated neutrally here and mainly implies portfolio-style marketing rather than deep single-category channel investment, which tempers expected adoption push. Main market uncertainty: whether emotive verb TLDs can win primary-identity use among wellness brands against the entrenched noun-form and legacy alternatives, or whether they remain secondary/redirect names.