.public
Is .public a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.public is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Sense about Science.
A broad, respectable word, but public bodies and charities already have homes; .public needs explaining and will sell mostly on price.
public-interest organisations, civic-tech and open-data projects, campaigns and publishers wanting an open-to-everyone signal, plus public-sector bodies not bound to a government namespace
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 broad abstract English adjective with no self-identifying registrant class, where the asset is the word's breadth and the registry has to manufacture a meaning for it rather than serve an existing group.
Same bet on the civic reading of the target: a collective-good noun sold as an open generic to membership bodies, civic groups and public institutions whose identity is 'belongs to everyone' rather than a trade or product category.
Public-benefit/public-interest is the target's civic sense expressed as a category word, betting that public-good organisations will put their primary identity on an abstract virtue term instead of a sector term.
What a .public domain is
.public is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .public domain extension real yet?
.public 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 .public domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .public name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .public was .open, delegated on 8 August 2016.
Is .public a real TLD?
Not yet. .public is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .public is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Sense about Science · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string is a common, positive English word with wide reach: public sector, public interest, public goods, public companies, public data. That breadth is also its weakness as an identity suffix: name.public does not say what the registrant is, and the natural buyers already have established homes. Government bodies are generally steered to national or government-reserved namespaces; charities and nonprofits default to .org; civic-tech projects mostly sit on .org or ccTLDs. By analogy (flagged as analogy), other public-interest-flavoured generic strings from the 2012 round such as .ngo, .community, .social and .charity found modest, explain-it-first adoption and thin aftermarkets, and .public is likely to behave similarly. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no single category where it would plausibly become a primary-identity default with a real resale market within five years; it is not in the 10-29 band because the word is serious, broadly usable and could register at volume on price for open-data portals, consultations, campaigns and open-to-everyone brands. The single applicant on the record, Sense about Science, has a standard (not community) application with .civic recorded as its replacement string, which suggests a public-interest positioning; whether the registry runs it open or with eligibility rules is unknown from the facts. Main market uncertainty: whether any public-sector or civic buyer group adopts .public as a primary identity rather than as a redirect or campaign address.