.kao
Is .kao a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.kao is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Kao Corporation.
A closed company-name ending for one firm's own websites; no public market for names, so its value depends on how much that firm uses it.
the applying company itself and its brands, products and regional sites; no outside registrants, since brand-type endings are closed to the public
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 as .kao: the house name of a multinational personal-care and household-products manufacturer that sells through dozens of product brands, wagering that the corporate parent name is the one string worth owning as primary identity.
A short Japanese corporate house name from a consumer-health and packaged-goods group, the same bet that a domestic Japanese parent's own name carries enough recognition to anchor identity rather than leaving it to the product brands.
Also a Japanese consumer-goods maker's house name that doubles as an ordinary dictionary word (as 'kao' means 'face' in Japanese), so both bets need the company name to outweigh a generic reading of the same string.
What a .kao domain is
.kao is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Brand. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .kao domain extension real yet?
.kao 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 .kao domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .kao name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens.
Is .kao a real TLD?
Not yet. .kao is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .kao is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Kao Corporation · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The verified-facts block records a single application from Kao Corporation of ICANN type 'brand', so the string is a closed, single-registrant namespace: the only buyer is the applicant, and addresses under it have end-use utility only for that company's own sites and campaigns. It is not in the 30-49 band because there are no volume or price-driven registrations and no aftermarket at all — nobody outside the company can buy a name, so resale and brand-credibility value to third parties is nil. It is not in the 1-9 band because there is a real, if singular, user with a plausible reason to run product, regional and campaign sites under its own name, which is more than 'no realistic market'. By analogy (flagged as analogy), brand-type endings from the earlier round have shown a wide spread of outcomes: a minority became genuine primary identities with the corporate site migrated onto them, while many stayed defensive or redirect-only and some were handed back — so the typical case is light use. The main market uncertainty is adoption depth: whether the company moves primary web identity onto .kao or keeps it as a defensive or marketing-only asset. Counts, launch timing and the company's current domain strategy are unknown from the facts provided.