.national
Is .national a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.national is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Identity Digital.
A broad adjective with no obvious owner; a few national bodies and brands may use it, but most buyers stay on .com or their country code.
national federations, associations, sports bodies and "National X" brands that want the word in the address; also registrars bundling it as a descriptive add-on
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 dictionary scope-adjective sold as an open generic that any organisation can bolt onto its name to claim a jurisdictional reach, with no defined registrant community and value resting entirely on the suffix reading as a credential.
Same bet: a reach/scope word with no inherent owner, monetised by selling the implied scale to whoever wants it, and carrying the same risk that an adjective nobody can verify becomes a vanity label rather than an identity.
Same bet on the nation-as-a-category idea — a broad generic whose plausible registrants (governments, national bodies, anyone selling 'national' goods) are mutually exclusive audiences, so it only works if one of those uses wins; it is a noun rather than a qualifier, which makes the job slightly different.
What a .national domain is
.national is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Other. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .national domain extension real yet?
.national 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 .national domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .national name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .national was .international, delegated on 28 December 2013.
Is .national a real TLD?
Not yet. .national is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .national is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
“TCL2632T-T11771 · Tidal Case, LLC · replacement string of .bakery TCL2632T-T35528 · Tidal Case, LLC · replacement string of .more TCL2632T-T43447 · Tidal Case, LLC · replacement string of .national TCL2632T-T59285 · Tidal Case, LLC · replacement string of .program”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), at its upper edge. The string is a common English adjective that trails a noun ("X national"), so names on it read as a descriptor rather than an identity: "geographic.national" or "team.national" works as a slogan, not a primary address. By analogy (flagged as analogy), the closest existing strings are .international and .global, both generic adjectives: they have found sustained but modest use, mostly as secondary or defensive registrations and for a small set of organisations that lean on the word, and neither has built a meaningful aftermarket. .national faces a further problem those do not: in most countries the natural home for a national body is the country-code TLD or a .org, and the word itself signals a jurisdiction the TLD cannot deliver. It is not in the 30-49 band because I see no buyer group likely to register at volume even on price (the word does not name a product, a profession or a place, so there is no catalogue of obvious keyword names) and the brand signal is weak-to-confusing. It is not in the 1-9 band because the word is real, broadly used and positive, there is a plausible if thin buyer set (federations, "National X" companies, sports and civic bodies), and the applicant on record, Identity Digital (status: confirmed, standard application), operates a large portfolio with established registrar distribution, which makes wide availability more likely than an orphaned string. Volume figures for the analogous TLDs are unknown to me within these rules. Main market uncertainty over the next 5 years: whether any country-level institutions or well-known "National X" brands adopt a name on it as a primary identity and are seen doing so; a handful of visible adopters would move it into the 30-49 band, while none would keep it a registrar add-on.