.raw
Is .raw a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody has applied for .raw in its own right, as of 7 October 2026. Link Freedom Group named .raw as the backup string of its .wise application.
Nobody has applied for .raw in its own right.
Will names sell?
A punchy word for 'unfiltered' brands and photo or data tools, but demand is scattered and few serious projects would make it home.
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. .raw’s closest 2012 strings hold .cool 23K, .hot 1K and .organic 2K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .cool, held 23,197 names, June 2026. .hot held 1,185; .organic held 1,774. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a short, ownerless English adjective that no company or community can claim as its primary identity, so it has to sell purely as an evocative modifier that makes a brandable left-of-dot phrase.
Same bet: a one-syllable qualitative adjective with several unrelated readings whose value depends entirely on registrants finding a phrase it completes, not on any defined registrant population.
Same bet in its food-and-goods reading, an adjective asserting how a product was made and aimed at sellers who want that claim in their name, but it has a regulated industry and certification regime behind it that .raw lacks.
creator and media brands selling authenticity or unfiltered content, plus photography, data-pipeline, and AI-output tools that want an edgy one-word suffix; secondarily food and lifestyle brands trading on 'raw' as a virtue word.
What a .raw domain is
.raw is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. Nobody has applied for .raw in its own right. It is named on ICANN’s list as part of an application for another string.
Is the .raw domain extension real yet?
.raw 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 .raw domain?
You can’t yet. A .raw 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 .raw was .cool, delegated on 23 January 2014.
Is .raw a real TLD?
Not yet. .raw is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because ICANN’s list names .raw as part of an application for another string. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Link Freedom Group · now replacementICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“LFGL2683T-T34391 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .wise”ICANN
“.raw · AI & Tech · “Not done yet.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. '.raw' is a strong single-syllable English adjective with several evocative readings: unfiltered content, raw camera files, raw data, raw food, raw AI output (the applicant catalogs it under AI & Tech with the tagline 'Not done yet.', which leans toward a work-in-progress or unpolished-output framing). That breadth is also the weakness: no single buyer category coheres around it, so adoption always needs explaining and the word mostly works as a modifier rather than a namespace. It is not in the 50-69 band because, by analogy with other short evocative-adjective and format-word TLDs, such strings have tended to see event-driven or promotional registrations rather than sustained primary-identity use, and I see no one vertical where foo.raw would read as the default address. It is not in the 10-29 band because the word is genuinely brandable across multiple plausible verticals (creator media, photography tooling, data infrastructure, food), supports clean two-part names (data.raw, feed.raw, eat.raw), and could sustain a modest defensive-plus-brandable register base, which is more than a joke or vanity string manages. The collision with the .raw camera-image file extension cuts both ways: it gives photography-tool buyers an instant hook but risks the name reading as a filename rather than a website. Applicant context: the string is announced by Link Freedom Group, which filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and published its list before Reveal Day (press-corroborated by Domain Name Wire, 2026-08-13); a large-portfolio applicant typically implies volume-oriented, registrar-channel distribution rather than concentrated category marketing, which caps how fast a single fuzzy string builds identity-grade credibility. Aftermarket expectations are thin: premium demand would concentrate in a handful of dictionary SLDs. Main market uncertainty: whether the 'unfiltered/authentic' positioning gets adopted by even one visible creator platform or AI-output brand in the next 5 years; a flagship user could pull this toward genuine niche status, while without one it stays a promo-price registration play. Analogy-based inferences above are flagged as such; specific comparable-TLD figures are unknown.