.indie
Is .indie a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.indie is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Suffix Inc..
A cheap, recognisable badge for small game, music and film creators, but most will treat it as a side address, not a main brand.
independent game studios, musicians, filmmakers, authors and small creative labels who want a web address that signals they are self-made rather than corporate
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 subculture's own self-applied scene label, sold to loose creative producers who want a badge of belonging rather than to any institution that can speak for or gatekeep the scene.
Also a community's own adjective adopted as primary identity by diffuse individuals and small businesses, with no governing body to anchor demand — though the belonging is demographic rather than vocational/aesthetic.
Another self-chosen cultural adjective whose value rests on members voluntarily wearing the label commercially, with the same thin-institution, many-tiny-buyers economics.
What a .indie domain is
.indie is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .indie domain extension real yet?
.indie is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .indie domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .indie name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .indie was .hiphop, delegated on 15 May 2014.
Is .indie a real TLD?
Not yet. .indie is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .indie is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Suffix Inc. · first recordedICANN
“LFGL2683T-T12771 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary SI2639T-T84933 · Suffix Inc. · replacement string of .rep · Deactivated”ICANN
“Catalog lists: .asap .create .future .lfg .mvp .out .pal .planet .research .share .tag .this .visit”Suffix Inc.
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string carries a real cultural identity across several sizable creator communities (indie games, indie music, indie film, self-published writing), so there is a plausible steady trickle of registrations on identity and price rather than only on novelty. By analogy (flagged as analogy), creative-adjective and creator-category TLDs such as .art, .design and .studio have found genuine but modest use, mostly as secondary or portfolio addresses, with thin resale markets; .indie looks like the same pattern with a narrower, more self-conscious label. It is not in 50-69 because 'indie' is a self-description many creators shed as they grow, and nothing in the verified facts suggests a platform, storefront or festival ecosystem that would make a .indie address a default primary identity. It is not in 10-29 because the label spans multiple large, active communities with ongoing demand for distinct, inexpensive identities, which should sustain more than event-driven or joke registrations over the next 5 years. Verified facts: one confirmed standard application from Suffix Inc. (ICANN ID SI2639T-T52624), with the same applicant's .verse string recorded as a deactivated backup; contention count on the record is 1. Applicant specifics beyond that are unknown. Main market uncertainty: whether indie game studios and musicians actually adopt a .indie name as their primary site identity, or only as a vanity redirect alongside a .com or platform page.