.hotpot
Is .hotpot a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .hotpot, 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 fun label for hotpot restaurants and food brands, but few businesses would make it their main web address.
hotpot restaurant chains and independent spots (largely in China and Chinese-diaspora food scenes), plus food-media and delivery brands wanting a playful cuisine-themed name
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “A simmering pot shared among friends.”
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 exactly: a single generic dish noun that doubles as a venue category, sold to independent operators and chains who would put their primary identity on the food they serve, with the string's value resting on how many restaurants define themselves by one dish.
Same buyer and same industry logic — a generic dining-trade noun bought by hospitality operators — but it is the whole category where .hotpot is one cuisine slice, so it needs breadth of adoption rather than depth within one food culture.
Also a consumable-category noun spanning suppliers, venues and enthusiasts, so the registrant mix and the enthusiast-plus-operator demand structure match, though coffee is a global commodity while hotpot's pull is concentrated in one cuisine's market.
What a .hotpot domain is
.hotpot 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 .hotpot today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .hotpot domain extension real yet?
.hotpot 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 .hotpot domain?
You can’t yet. A .hotpot 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 .hotpot was .pizza, delegated on 27 August 2014.
Is .hotpot a real TLD?
Not yet. .hotpot is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .hotpot 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
“.hotpot · Cuisine · “A simmering pot shared among friends.””Journey To The West Corporation
- By analogy with existing cuisine-and-food gTLDs such as .pizza, .kitchen, and .restaurant, dish-specific strings have historically drawn modest, price-sensitive registration with little primary-identity use and a thin aftermarket — and .hotpot is narrower than any of those. The core commercial base for the word is the Chinese restaurant market, where discovery runs through platforms and super-apps rather than owned domains, and where Latin-script niche gTLD adoption has generally been weak (analogy). That places it in the 10-29 vanity/narrow band: it is memorable and could see event- or trend-driven pickup, keeping it above the no-market 1-9 band, but it lacks the sustained cross-buyer demand and brand signal that would justify the 30-49 usable-but-limited band. The applicant is a Beijing-based portfolio applicant with 323 submitted strings, which says little about dedicated category marketing either way. Main market uncertainty: whether hotpot's continuing global restaurant boom translates into any owned-web identity demand at all, versus staying entirely on social and delivery platforms.