.soul
Is .soul a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.soul is contested: 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are GoDaddy Registry and Automattic. Link Freedom Group named .soul as a backup string for its .moon 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
Two of the two already run TLDs, 7.61M names between them.
Will names sell?
An evocative word for wellness, music, and spiritual brands, but few serious projects would pick it as their main web 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. .soul’s closest 2012 strings hold .faith 6K and .love 69K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .faith, held 5,558 names, June 2026. .love held 68,867. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
- .heart
Same bet: a short, emotive abstract noun with no defined registrant class, sold on feeling rather than category fit, so it has to attract wellness, faith, cause and lifestyle buyers who each read their own meaning into it.
Same bet in the spiritual register: an abstract inner-life noun open to anyone rather than a named community, which works only if believers and practitioners treat a non-denominational word as their primary identity rather than a keyword.
Also a one-word emotional abstraction aimed at broad consumer sentiment, but its bet leans more on giftable/novelty second-domain use than on the identity-carrying, practitioner-facing demand .soul depends on.
Where they meet elsewhere
Link Freedom Group and GoDaddy Registry face each other in 32 contests this round, .soul included.
- GoDaddy Registry × Link Freedom Group
- GoDaddy Registry × Automattic
- Link Freedom Group × Automattic
wellness and spirituality brands, soul/R&B musicians and labels, creator and lifestyle projects wanting an emotional one-word identity, plus a smaller tail of gaming and AI-companion products trading on the word
What a .soul domain is
.soul is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .soul domain extension real yet?
.soul 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 .soul domain?
You can’t yet. A .soul name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens.
Is .soul a real TLD?
Not yet. .soul is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .soul 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
- Link Freedom Group · now abandonedICANN
- 2 applicants · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“KKWT2621T-T35786 · Knock Knock WHOIS There, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-219 LFGL2683T-T89070 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .moon · Deactivated NA2631T-T69966 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-219”ICANN
“KKWT2621T-T35786 · Knock Knock WHOIS There, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-219 NA2631T-T69966 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-219”ICANN
“.soul · Culture · “More than meets the eye.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a common, emotionally loaded dictionary word with clear associations (soul music, soul food, spirituality, wellness), which gives it genuine brandable surface across several consumer niches over the next 5 years. It is not in the 50-69 band because no single category treats a suffix like this as a primary-identity convention: a wellness studio, a musician, or a food brand can use it, but each adoption needs explaining, and by analogy with other emotive dictionary-word TLDs (.life, .love, .world), such strings have tended to fill with volume and price-driven registrations rather than flagship identities (analogy, not asserted data). It is not in the 10-29 band because the word is broad, positive, and usable across multiple real commercial niches, so demand is more than event-driven or joke registrations. Aftermarket value is likely thin outside a handful of premium one-word matches (music.soul, food.soul style pairings), again reasoning by analogy from comparable descriptive TLDs. Applicant facts are neutral context only: the string is announced by Link Freedom Group, which filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and published its catalog listing this string under Culture with the tagline 'More than meets the eye.'; a large-portfolio applicant suggests portfolio-style marketing rather than a single-string evangelism push, which tempers adoption expectations. Main market uncertainty: whether the wellness/spirituality and music niches actually convert emotional affinity for the word into primary-identity registrations, or treat .soul as a redirect/vanity layer; pricing posture (mass-market vs premium brandable) is unknown and would shape which of those outcomes dominates.