.wan
Is .wan a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.wan is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Alibaba.
A brand-type application: useful as the applicant's own short web identity, but not a namespace others can buy or resell.
the applicant itself, for product and service addresses under a short brand-controlled string; no third-party registrants under a brand-type application
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 as .wan: a three-letter piece of network-industry jargon that only vendors and operators inside one delivery niche would ever recognise or brand on, so the namespace's whole value rests on insider adoption rather than on any word the public reads.
Also an insider shorthand for an enterprise network-infrastructure discipline whose primary-identity buyer is a vendor or integrator selling into IT departments, a narrow B2B base that has to be convinced to move its brand onto the category term.
The same compact infrastructure abbreviation whose audience is purely technical, but it labels a standards concept rather than a sellable product category, so fewer parties would ever want it as their own identity.
What a .wan domain is
.wan is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Brand. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .wan domain extension real yet?
.wan 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 .wan domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .wan name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .wan was .ott, delegated on 27 May 2016.
Is .wan a real TLD?
Not yet. .wan is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .wan is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Alibaba · first recordedICANN
“AIPL2696T-T64813 · ALIBABA INNOVATION PRIVATE LIMITED · primary”ICANN
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The record shows a single confirmed application of ICANN type brand, so the realistic market over the next 5 years is one registrant using the string for its own product addresses, with no open registration and no aftermarket. The string itself is short and carries meaning: it is a common pinyin syllable with several readings in Chinese-language use, an English networking abbreviation, and, to my knowledge, matches a product name in the applicant's AI portfolio (unverified, not from the facts block). That gives it genuine primary-identity utility for the applicant, which keeps it out of the 1-9 band. It is not in the 30-49 band because a brand-type TLD produces no volume registrations and no price-driven demand; by analogy, prior-round dot-brands from large technology companies have mostly been used sparingly for redirects or a handful of product hosts rather than as a public namespace (analogy, no figures). Main market uncertainty: whether the applicant actually builds public-facing product addresses on the string or leaves it defensive, which is the difference between the top and bottom of the chosen band.