.sci
Is .sci a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.sci is not contested. One applicant has said publicly that it applied to run it, and nobody else has, as of 15 August 2026. It is Link Freedom Group.
A tidy shorthand for science brands, but labs and researchers already have trusted homes online, so demand should stay modest.
science-adjacent startups, research-tool makers, sci-comm creators, and deep-tech brands that want a compact science signal in the name itself; institutional researchers are unlikely converts since universities and journals sit on entrenched namespaces.
In LFG's published list of 300+ strings submitted before the ICANN window closed on 2026-08-12. Their catalog tagline: “The lab for big ideas.”
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.
Identical bet in unabbreviated form: a broad field-of-knowledge noun sold as a credibility namespace to researchers, institutions and publishers, where value depends on the field's practitioners agreeing to move their primary identity off .edu/.org rather than on any commercial traffic.
The same three-letter clipped-form-of-a-serious-field bet, living beside its own full-word sibling and depending on gatekeeping/verification to make the shortness read as authority rather than as a cheap abbreviation — differing mainly in that its buyers are practitioners with patients and revenue, not grant-funded institutions.
Also a clipped generic field noun launched alongside its full-word twin, betting that the abbreviation is the way insiders actually say it; weaker as a parallel because it targets a mass commercial startup market with no credential gate, where .sci's whole premise is that not everyone should be allowed in.
What a .sci domain is
.sci is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under AI & tech. One applicant has said publicly that it applied for .sci.
Is the .sci domain extension real yet?
.sci 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 .sci domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .sci name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .sci was .science, delegated on .
Is .sci a real TLD?
Not yet. .sci is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant said publicly that it applied for .sci in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round. Every claim on this page links to its source.
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“.sci · AI & Tech · “The lab for big ideas.””Link Freedom Group
“LFG voluntarily published its full list of submissions ahead of ICANN’s official Reveal Day.”PR Newswire (Link Freedom Group)
“Top level domain registry Link Freedom Group (LFG) has disclosed more than 300 strings submitted as part of the ICANN new top level domain name program.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Band chosen: usable but limited (30-49). Over the next 5 years, .sci reads as a clean three-letter abbreviation for science, which is a real and broad vertical, but the buyers with the strongest science identity, universities, journals, and government labs, are locked into incumbent namespaces and rarely rebrand onto new TLDs; that leaves startups and creators, who in the AI-and-science space tend to default to established tech-signal TLDs. By analogy (flagged as analogy), the full-word .science generic saw registration volume driven largely by low pricing rather than primary-identity use, and a shorter synonym is unlikely to invert that dynamic on its own, so aftermarket depth is likely thin. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no known sustained primary-identity demand for a science-abbreviation TLD and adoption would need explaining to nearly every buyer; it is above the 10-29 band because the string is short, pronounceable, meaning-dense, and maps to a genuine, durable registrant pool rather than a joke or one-off event. Applicant context, stated neutrally: the string is announced by Link Freedom Group, which filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and published its list ahead of Reveal Day (press-corroborated by Domain Name Wire), with this string cataloged under 'AI & Tech' with the tagline 'The lab for big ideas.'; a portfolio of that breadth says little either way about how this specific string will be positioned in market. Main market uncertainty: whether the current wave of AI-for-science and deep-tech startups adopts abbreviated science branding as a differentiator, or keeps defaulting to incumbent tech TLDs, which would cap .sci at discount-volume registrations.