.stay
Is .stay a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.stay is contested: 2 applicants have said publicly that they applied to run it, as of 16 August 2026. They are Oinkadot and Link Freedom Group.
A friendly word for hotels and rentals, but travel businesses already have addresses; expect niche use, not a hospitality standard.
boutique hotels, vacation-rental and short-term-stay operators, extended-stay and co-living brands, plus travel-adjacent startups wanting a warm, memorable hospitality address
In LFG's published list of 300+ strings submitted before the ICANN window closed on 2026-08-12. Their catalog tagline: “Make yourself at home.”
One of 25 strings the Oinkadot partnership (Ray King of Porkbun and Todd Han of Dynadot) applied for in the ICANN 2026 round, per Domain Name Wire's exclusive.
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: a plain generic lodging noun that any accommodation provider could put its primary identity on, sold as the industry's home namespace rather than one company's brand.
Same bet in form and risk: a short, everyday common noun whose lodging meaning is only one of several, so it depends on the hospitality sector claiming the word before generic-usage buyers dilute it.
Same buyer and same category-noun logic — short-term accommodation operators branding on the sector's own word — though it is a broader services noun that reaches beyond lodging into cars and equipment.
What a .stay domain is
.stay is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. 2 applicants have said publicly that they applied for .stay.
Is the .stay domain extension real yet?
.stay 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 .stay domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .stay name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens.
Is .stay a real TLD?
Not yet. .stay is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant said publicly that it applied for .stay in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round. Every claim on this page links to its source.
- Oinkadot · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
“A new partnership has applied for 25 top level domain names in this year's ICANN TLD expansion round.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
“.stay · Lifestyle · “Make yourself at home.””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: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string is a clean, common English verb-noun with an obvious hospitality meaning, which puts it above the 10-29 vanity band: a rental operator or boutique hotel could plausibly use name.stay as a real primary identity, and phrases like 'my.stay' or 'book.stay' read naturally. It does not reach the 50-69 strong-niche band because there is no known sustained demand for hospitality-word gTLDs as primary identities: by analogy (flagged as such), travel- and lodging-themed strings such as .travel, .hotel, .rentals and .vacations have generally seen thin uptake and weak aftermarkets, with serious hospitality brands defaulting to .com and much of the short-stay economy living inside booking platforms rather than on their own domains. The applicant, Link Freedom Group, filed more than 300 strings in the ICANN 2026 round and lists this one under 'Lifestyle' with the tagline 'Make yourself at home.', suggesting a broad portfolio play rather than a hospitality-industry coalition, which by analogy tends to mean open registration on price rather than category-led adoption. My main market uncertainty: whether independent short-stay and boutique lodging operators treat their own domain as a primary identity at all over the next 5 years, or continue to anchor their presence on aggregator platforms, which would cap .stay at defensive and vanity registrations.