.rice
Is .rice a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .rice, as of 7 October 2026. One applicant claimed it and is out. We keep the entry on the record either way.
- Journey To The West
A narrow food-word ending a few rice brands or bowl shops might try, but most will stay on .com; expect thin demand and little resale value.
rice producers, millers and exporters, rice-bowl restaurants and fast-casual chains, and food bloggers wanting a literal ingredient-word address
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The grain that feeds half the world.”
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 exactly: a single named agricultural commodity as a category namespace, sold to a globally fragmented chain of growers, traders, processors and retailers who all have equal claim to the word and none of whom owns it.
Also a single foodstuff-category noun bet on an entire producing industry adopting a shared home, though wine carries value-added consumer branding and geographic-indication politics that a bulk staple grain does not.
A plain commodity-food noun whose only plausible registrants are the producers, processors and sellers of that one foodstuff, with the same low-glamour, low-brand-equity profile as a staple crop.
What a .rice domain is
.rice is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. Nobody is chasing .rice today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .rice domain extension real yet?
.rice 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 .rice domain?
You can’t yet. A .rice 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 .rice was .coffee, delegated on 28 December 2013.
Is .rice a real TLD?
Not yet. .rice is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .rice and is no longer in it. We keep the entry, and every entry on this page links to its source.
- Journey To The West · now abandonedICANN
- Journey To The West · first recordedJourney To The West Corporation
“.rice · Nature & Geography · “The grain that feeds half the world.””Journey To The West Corporation
- By analogy with delegated food-word TLDs such as .pizza, .coffee and .wine, single-ingredient strings have drawn modest, price-sensitive registration bases and shallow aftermarkets, and .rice is narrower than those: rice businesses rarely brand around the bare ingredient, and the crop's commercial center of gravity is in Asian markets where English-word new gTLDs have historically struggled against .com and local ccTLDs (analogy, figures unknown). Some genuine primary-identity use is plausible for rice-bowl restaurant concepts and boutique rice brands in English-speaking markets, which lifts it above the no-market floor. I place it in the 10-29 vanity/narrow band: it is below 30-49 because volume registrations even on price look unlikely and the brand signal is weak outside a sliver of food businesses, and above 1-9 because a real, if small, set of restaurants and specialty brands could plausibly adopt it. The applicant is a portfolio filer of many strings, which suggests standard registry marketing rather than a dedicated industry push (stated neutrally, from the facts block). Main market uncertainty: whether Asian rice exporters and agri-commerce platforms would adopt an English-word TLD at all for outward-facing trade identities.