.rem
Is .rem a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.rem is contested: 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 8 October 2026. They are LongRange Capital and Aruba. LongRange Capital named .rem as a backup string for its .mem application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
A weak TLD for most names for sleep- and wellness-tech startups, front-end developers riffing on the CSS rem unit, and domain hackers after strings like lo.rem or the.rem.
Who is applying, and how much each already runs
One of the 2 is tied to a registry that runs TLDs today. Aruba and LongRange Capital filed 22 applications between them across the round.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .xyz, held 9,153,912 names, June 2026. .icu held 641,320; .ooo held 14,213. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
The same bet on a short, semantically thin three-character string whose value is length and memorability rather than category meaning — an open registry selling the letters themselves to anyone who wants a compact domain.
Also a three-letter string that reads as an initialism with several unrelated meanings, so the registry must sell one reading (or none) to a broad, undefined buyer base rather than owning an established category.
Another content-free micro-string offered as a blank slate where the registrant supplies the meaning, so success rests entirely on adoption and price rather than on matching an existing industry, profession, or brand.
sleep- and wellness-tech startups, front-end developers riffing on the CSS rem unit, and domain hackers after strings like lo.rem or the.rem
What a .rem domain is
.rem is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our AI & tech category. 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .rem domain extension real yet?
.rem 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 .rem domain?
You can’t yet. A .rem 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 .rem was .xyz, delegated on 19 February 2014.
Is .rem a real TLD?
Not yet. .rem is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .rem is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- LongRange Capital · first recordedICANN
- LongRange Capital · first recordedICANN
- Aruba · now confirmedICANN
- Aruba · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
“APEC2611T-T77002 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · primary · contention set 2026-199 LDII2637T-T26109 · LRC Digital IP, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-199”ICANN
“APEC2611T-T77002 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · primary · contention set 2026-199 LDII2637T-T26109 · LRC Digital IP, Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-199 LDII2637T-T45959 · LRC Digital IP, Inc. · replacement string of .mem · Deactivated”ICANN
“Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The company told Domain Name Wire that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year's new TLD round. That number includes replacement strings. [...] The company applied for the following strings as primary or replacement: aid, all, ask, beta, bit, bnb, cart, ciao, daily, demo, easy, fix, gaming, gen, genius, gym, happy, hello, hola, human, kit, lab, mars, max, moon, omg, pec, pop, rem, roma, sign, sito, super, tag, tex, vps, yes, zen, zzz”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The string .rem has several weak, competing meanings — REM sleep, the CSS root-em unit, an older radiation dose unit, and a band name — none of which defines a buyer category large enough to make it a primary identity by default, so it does not reach the 30-49 'usable but limited' band where at least volume or price-driven registration is plausible; it stays above 1-9 because sleep-tech and wellness brands, developer-tool projects, and a handful of genuine domain hacks (lo.rem, the.rem) give it a real if shallow market. By analogy (flagged), short, meaning-ambiguous new gTLDs from the 2012 round tended to see an initial spike from speculators and hobbyists followed by thin renewals and a near-absent aftermarket, unless the operator priced aggressively or bundled with hosting; the applicant's hosting and registrar distribution could lift raw registrations somewhat, but distribution does not manufacture a category identity. Main market uncertainty: whether the sleep/wellness-tech vertical adopts .rem as a recognizable signal (which would move it toward the niche band) or whether it stays a scattering of hacks and defensive registrations.