.koi
Is .koi a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .koi, 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 short, pretty suffix for koi hobbyists and Japan-inspired brands; charming, but the natural market is too small to sustain serious use.
koi and pond hobbyist businesses, aquatics retailers, Japanese-aesthetic lifestyle brands, and a thin tail of startups wanting a short evocative ending
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round (flagship tier). Their catalog line: “The fish that swims upstream into a dragon.”
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 single-species noun owned by a small, passionate breeder-plus-hobbyist economy (breeders, dealers, clubs, show circuits, equipment suppliers) who would credibly hang their primary identity on the animal's own name.
Also an animal-species noun sold to a pet/breeder/supplier economy, but the audience is mass consumer rather than a tight specialist hobby, so it rests on general pet commerce instead of a self-identifying niche community.
The category-level version of the same bet, serving aquarium and pond trade plus enthusiasts, but it is the broad bucket koi sits inside and so must serve many unrelated buyers rather than one coherent hobby.
What a .koi domain is
.koi is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. Nobody is chasing .koi today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .koi domain extension real yet?
.koi 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 .koi domain?
You can’t yet. A .koi 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 .koi was .horse, delegated on 31 March 2014.
Is .koi a real TLD?
Not yet. .koi is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .koi 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
“.koi · Flagship · “The fish that swims upstream into a dragon.””Journey To The West Corporation
- Band 10-29 (vanity/narrow): the string is memorable and aesthetically strong, but the koi-keeping and Japan-aesthetic niche is small and rarely needs a dedicated namespace, so demand looks shallow and event-driven rather than sustained. It is not in the 30-49 band because, by analogy with other evocative animal/culture strings such as .fish and .moe, such TLDs have tended toward low registration volume and thin primary-identity use rather than volume-on-price registrations (analogy, no figures asserted). It is above the 1-9 band because a real, if tiny, hobbyist commerce sector (breeders, pond supply, shows) plus brandable appeal of a three-letter word with dual meanings (carp; love in Japanese) supports some genuine registrations and modest aftermarket interest. Main market uncertainty: whether 'koi' functions as a broader brandable suffix for startups the way a few culture-word TLDs have, or stays confined to the hobbyist niche; the applicant's large multi-string portfolio (stated fact) suggests catalog-style distribution whose per-string marketing depth is unknown.