.virtue
Is .virtue a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .virtue, 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 pretty dictionary word with no natural buyer group; occasional ethics or wellness branding, rarely a serious primary address.
wellness, ethics, faith-adjacent and personal-development brands wanting a values-signaling name, plus a thin layer of speculators on single-word virtue phrases
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round. Their catalog line: “The quality prized above wealth or power.”
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 single abstract moral-quality noun nobody owns and nobody can verify, sold to any organization willing to pay to assert that quality about itself as its primary identity.
Also an abstract virtue noun straddling secular and religious registrants, resting on the same unproven assumption that people will hang their public identity on a value word rather than their name or category.
A self-declared, unpoliceable values claim adopted as a badge of ethical standing, so its viability depends on the same virtue-signaling demand rather than on any defined industry or community of registrants.
What a .virtue domain is
.virtue is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Culture. Nobody is chasing .virtue today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .virtue domain extension real yet?
.virtue 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 .virtue domain?
You can’t yet. A .virtue 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 .virtue was .trust, delegated on 6 December 2014.
Is .virtue a real TLD?
Not yet. .virtue is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .virtue 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
“.virtue · Festival & Fortune · “The quality prized above wealth or power.””Journey To The West Corporation
- Band 10-29: .virtue is an abstract moral-concept string with no category anchor, no professional community, and no obvious left-of-dot naming pattern that reads naturally. By analogy (flagged as analogy), abstract-quality TLDs like .faith, .love and .charity have seen registrations driven by promotions or events rather than sustained primary-identity use, and .virtue is narrower than any of them. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no evident volume or price-driven demand engine, and not in the 1-9 band because ethics-tech, wellness, and values-branding projects could plausibly adopt a handful of memorable names over the next 5 years. The applicant is a large-portfolio filer (323 published strings per the facts block), which is neutral on the string itself but suggests standard open-registry positioning rather than a curated community push. Main market uncertainty: whether the current wave of AI-ethics and values-forward branding produces real demand for virtue-language namespaces or ignores them entirely.