.hip
Is .hip a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .hip in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. ShortDot named .hip as the backup string of its .gig application.
A niche TLD for lifestyle, streetwear, hip-hop and nightlife brands wanting a playful "cool" suffix, plus a smaller orthopedic/health niche and acronym holders (HIP) looking for a short hack.
Nobody has applied for .hip in its own right.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .cool, held 23,197 names, June 2026. .hot held 1,185; .sexy held 2,987. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Near-identical bet: a short slang English adjective of trendiness with no defined registrant class, sold as a vibe suffix to anyone who wants the name to editorialize about them, so its value rests entirely on the adjective staying culturally current.
Same shape of bet — a one-syllable colloquial adjective meaning fashionable/in-demand, marketed horizontally rather than to any industry — though it carries a heat/temperature literal use that gives it commercial footholds .hip lacks.
Also a speculative slang-adjective play whose registrants buy an attitude rather than a category, but its adult-content gravity narrows the buyer pool in a way a neutral trendiness word like .hip does not.
lifestyle, streetwear, hip-hop and nightlife brands wanting a playful "cool" suffix, plus a smaller orthopedic/health niche and acronym holders (HIP) looking for a short hack
What a .hip domain is
.hip is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. Nobody has applied for .hip in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .hip domain extension real yet?
.hip 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 .hip domain?
You can’t yet. A .hip 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 .hip was .cool, delegated on 23 January 2014.
Is .hip a real TLD?
Not yet. .hip is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .hip as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- ShortDot · now replacementICANN
- ShortDot · now announced
- ShortDot · first recordedShortDot (Ireland) Limited
“NA2626T-T11779 · ShortDot (Ireland) Limited · replacement string of .gig”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
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). .hip is a three-letter English adjective with three plausible readings — fashionable/cool, hip-hop culture, and the anatomical/orthopedic sense — none of which describes a business category the way .shop or .app do, so demand is mostly stylistic. By analogy (flagged as analogy), adjective/mood TLDs such as .cool, .fun, .lol and .wtf have drawn registrations largely on promotional pricing and novelty, with sparse primary-identity use and a thin aftermarket; .hip is narrower than .cool because the slang sense has aged and the alternate senses fragment the audience. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no verified evidence of a category that would register at volume on the string's own merit rather than on price, and brand signal is weak outside a lifestyle niche; it is above the 1-9 band because the string is short, pronounceable, memorable, and the operator recorded on the catalog (ShortDot, per the facts block) runs price-led volume TLDs, which by analogy tends to produce real if shallow registration counts. Main market uncertainty: whether hip-hop, streetwear or nightlife brands adopt .hip as a genuine primary identity (which would lift it toward the usable-but-limited band) versus it remaining a redirect/vanity purchase. Registration figures, pricing and launch dates are unknown.