.sea
Is .sea a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.sea is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is XYZ Registry. Cook Islands Internet Action Group named .sea as a backup string for its .island application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Link Freedom Group named .sea as a backup string for its .god application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
Who is applying, and what they run today
One of the 3 is tied to a registry that runs TLDs today. Link Freedom Group and XYZ Registry filed 297 applications between them across the round.
Will names sell?
A pretty ocean-themed ending some coastal brands and Southeast Asia projects may like, but few will treat it as their main address.
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. .sea’s closest 2012 strings hold .earth 42K, .space 635K and .land 23K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .earth, held 41,706 names, June 2026. .space held 634,547; .land held 22,680. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a short elemental natural-world noun with no single owning industry, sold on evocative resonance to a mixed pool of environmental, scientific and lifestyle registrants rather than to a defined commercial vertical.
Same bet on a common elemental noun whose pull comes from double meaning and broad semantic flex, where the registry must manufacture demand because no incumbent trade body already calls itself by that word.
Same bet on a generic terrain noun that has to work both literally (property, geography) and as a right-of-dot wordplay ending, since no organized industry would move its primary identity onto it.
coastal and marine lifestyle brands (tourism, sailing, diving, seafood, waterfront hospitality), plus tech and media projects targeting the Southeast Asia region who read 'sea' as the regional shorthand, and a smaller tail of Seattle-adjacent projects
What a .sea domain is
.sea is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .sea domain extension real yet?
.sea 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 .sea domain?
You can’t yet. A .sea 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 .sea was .earth, delegated on 14 May 2015.
Is .sea a real TLD?
Not yet. .sea is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .sea is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Link Freedom Group · now deactivated backupICANN
- Cook Islands Internet Action Group · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now abandonedICANN
- XYZ Registry · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“CIIA2564-T39435 · Cook Islands Internet Action Group Inc. · replacement string of .island · Deactivated LFGL2683T-T48721 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .god · Deactivated XL2625T-T21452 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary”ICANN
“.sea · Lifestyle · “Not quite an ocean, still epic.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: usable but limited (30-49). The string is a short, clean dictionary word with three distinct readings: the ocean-lifestyle sense, 'SEA' as common shorthand for Southeast Asia, and 'SEA' as a widely used Seattle abbreviation. That breadth keeps it above the vanity band: registrations can plausibly happen at volume across marine tourism, water sports, seafood, and region-targeted projects, and the word itself is attractive enough that some small brands would genuinely use it. It stays below the strong-niche band because no single category is likely to adopt it as a primary-identity default in the next 5 years; by analogy (flagged as analogy) with other marine and lifestyle strings such as .surf, .fish, .boats, and .yachts, evocative single-word TLDs in this space have tended toward modest, price-sensitive registration bases and thin aftermarkets rather than sustained primary-identity use, and 'unknown' is the honest answer on any of their actual registration or resale figures. The Southeast Asia reading is the most interesting upside, since region-shorthand demand behaves more like a geo TLD, but whether regional startups and media would rally around a generic-round string rather than country codes is unproven. The applicant, Link Freedom Group, filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and lists this one under 'Lifestyle' with the tagline 'Not quite an ocean, still epic.', which signals a broad-portfolio lifestyle positioning rather than a marine-industry or regional anchor strategy; that makes concentrated category-building less likely, though delegation and availability are assumed here. Main market uncertainty: whether the SEA-as-Southeast-Asia reading attracts real regional adoption, which would pull demand toward the top of this band or above it, versus the string settling as an ocean-themed novelty with event-driven and hobbyist registrations.