.mart
Is .mart a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.mart is contested: 6 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 8 October 2026. They are XYZ Registry, GoDaddy Registry, Identity Digital, Starlight (Namecheap), Radix and Link Freedom Group. Intercap named .mart as a backup string for its .merch application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Who is applying, and what they run today
Four of the six already run TLDs, 44.40M names between them. Two run one of .mart's closest 2012 strings: Identity Digital .market and Radix .store. Link Freedom Group and Starlight (Namecheap) run none.
Will names sell?
A commerce word with real retail resonance, but shoppers and sellers already have stronger, established web endings for stores.
Last round the AI scored the 2012 strings blind to their fate. Strings it scored 60 or more hold a median 27,168 names today; those under 30, a median of 30. .mart’s closest 2012 strings hold .store 2.34M, .shop 4.72M and .market 21K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .store, held 2,335,965 names, June 2026. .shop held 4,716,233; .market held 20,973. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 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.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and XYZ Registry face each other in 77 contests this round, .mart included.
- Identity Digital × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × GoDaddy Registry
- Link Freedom Group × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Radix
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.
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, in our Commerce category. 6 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
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. A .mart 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 .mart was .store, delegated on 22 February 2016.
Is .mart a real TLD?
Not yet. .mart is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .mart is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Starlight (Namecheap) · noteDomain Name Wire
- Intercap · first recordedICANN
- 4 applicants · first recordedICANN
- 2 applicants · now confirmedICANN
- Radix · first recordedRadix
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
The source’s 6 linesHide the lines
LFGL2683T-T25718 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-149 MEI2627T-T73873 · Menkalinan Exploration, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-149 MH2645T-T29121 · Mystic Hammer, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-149 NA2631T-T45830 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-149 RTIS2674T-T19440 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · primary · contention set 2026-149 XL2625T-T45963 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary · contention set 2026-149
The source’s 7 linesHide the lines
IRI2679T-T88820 · Intercap Registry Inc. · replacement string of .merch · Deactivated LFGL2683T-T25718 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-149 MEI2627T-T73873 · Menkalinan Exploration, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-149 MH2645T-T29121 · Mystic Hammer, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-149 NA2631T-T45830 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-149 RTIS2674T-T19440 · Radix Technologies Inc SEZC · primary · contention set 2026-149 XL2625T-T45963 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary · contention set 2026-149
“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
- 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.