.mart
Is .mart a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.mart is contested: 3 applicants have said publicly that they applied to run it, as of 27 August 2026. They are Radix, Starlight Registry and Link Freedom Group.
A commerce word with real retail resonance, but shoppers and sellers already have stronger, established web endings for stores.
small retailers, marketplace startups, and '-mart'-branded chains, especially in South and East Asian markets where 'mart' is a common store-name suffix, plus domain investors betting on short commerce keywords.
In LFG's published list of 300+ strings submitted before the ICANN window closed on 2026-08-12. Their catalog tagline: “Where buyers and sellers meet.”
One of 40 strings Starlight Registry (established by registrar Namecheap) applied for in the ICANN 2026 round, reported by Domain Name Wire on 2026-08-19.
One of 46 ICANN 2026-round applications Radix announced on its own applications page. Radix states it intends to build and operate each TLD it wins.
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 generic, unowned retail-premises noun that any merchant in any vertical can put their primary selling identity on, monetized by broad volume rather than by a community or an incumbent brand.
Identical play — the everyday consumer-facing word for a place that sells things, chasing the same undifferentiated merchant registrant who wants a commerce-signalling address rather than a category- or brand-specific one.
Also a generic commerce-venue noun sold to sellers, but it leans multi-vendor and financial, so the registrant it attracts is broader and less purely retail-storefront than the target's.
What a .mart domain is
.mart is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. 3 applicants have said publicly that they applied for .mart.
Is the .mart domain extension real yet?
.mart 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 .mart domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .mart name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .mart was .store, delegated on .
Is .mart a real TLD?
Not yet. .mart is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant said publicly that it applied for .mart in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round. Every claim on this page links to its source.
- Radix · first recordedRadix
- Starlight Registry · first recordedDomain Name Wire
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“Radix has applied for these TLDs; we do not own or operate them today.”Radix
“For us, moving into the registry side is a natural extension of what we have been building.”Domain Name Wire
“.mart · Commerce · “Where buyers and sellers meet.””Link Freedom Group
“LFG voluntarily published its full list of submissions ahead of ICANN’s official Reveal Day.”PR Newswire (Link Freedom Group)
“Top level domain registry Link Freedom Group (LFG) has disclosed more than 300 strings submitted as part of the ICANN new top level domain name program.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. 'Mart' is a genuine, globally understood commerce word, and it is especially alive as a retail-brand suffix in South and East Asia, which gives the string a plausible buyer pool beyond novelty. But the online-store namespace already has entrenched commerce TLDs that, by analogy, absorbed most primary-identity demand in this category; a synonym entrant typically wins registrations on price rather than preference, with a thin aftermarket concentrated in a handful of generic keywords (analogy-based inference from how later synonym commerce strings have fared against category incumbents). It is not in the 50-69 band because sustained primary-identity demand would need .mart to displace already-default commerce endings, which is unlikely within 5 years absent a major anchor adopter; it is above the 10-29 band because the word is a real commercial term with authentic brand usage, not a joke or event-driven string, so serious small-retail use is plausible at the margin. The applicant is Link Freedom Group, which filed a large portfolio of strings in the 2026 round and published its list; its catalog places .mart under Commerce with the tagline 'Where buyers and sellers meet.' Portfolio-scale applicants tend, by analogy, toward broad availability and volume pricing rather than concentrated category marketing, which fits a registration-volume outcome more than a category-standard outcome. Main market uncertainty: whether the strong '-mart' naming convention in Asian retail converts into primary-identity domain adoption, or whether those businesses keep defaulting to .com and country-code domains.