.wear
Is .wear a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.wear is contested: 3 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are Identity Digital, GoDaddy Registry and Google Registry. XYZ Registry named .wear as a backup string for its .well application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. Link Freedom Group named .wear as a backup string for its .chain 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
Three of the three already run TLDs, 24.35M names between them. Three run one of .wear's closest 2012 strings: Identity Digital .clothing, Identity Digital .shoes and GoDaddy Registry .fashion.
Will names sell?
A fashion-flavored web address that can make a cute brand name, but most clothing businesses will still pick a mainstream domain.
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. .wear’s closest 2012 strings hold .clothing 10K, .shoes 4K and .fashion 13K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .clothing, held 10,186 names, June 2026. .shoes held 4,065; .fashion held 13,250. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet exactly: an unowned generic apparel-category noun opened to any seller in that category, where the registry's value rests on merchants and brands accepting a product-category word as their storefront identity.
Same structure and buyer — a plain product-category noun in apparel sold to the retailers and label owners of that category, working only if sellers will hang their primary identity on the goods they sell rather than their own name.
Also an open apparel-vertical generic aimed at the same merchant and brand pool, but it is an industry/lifestyle abstraction that pulls media, designers and editorial buyers, not the narrow product-noun-as-storefront bet .wear makes.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and XYZ Registry face each other in 77 contests this round, .wear included.
- Identity Digital × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × GoDaddy Registry
- XYZ Registry × Link Freedom Group
- Link Freedom Group × GoDaddy Registry
apparel and streetwear brands, activewear and accessories startups, and fashion-adjacent creators who want a name like active.wear or street.wear as a stylistic hook
What a .wear domain is
.wear is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Commerce category. 3 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .wear domain extension real yet?
.wear 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 .wear domain?
You can’t yet. A .wear 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 .wear was .clothing, delegated on 6 November 2013.
Is .wear a real TLD?
Not yet. .wear is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .wear is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- XYZ Registry · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now deactivated backupICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now abandonedICANN
- 3 applicants · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
The source’s 5 linesHide the lines
CRRI2564-T12775 · Charleston Road Registry Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-251 LFGL2683T-T52491 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · replacement string of .chain · Deactivated NA2631T-T98247 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-251 TT2652T-T49229 · Toddler Logic, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-251 XL2625T-T97751 · XYZ.COM LLC · replacement string of .well · Deactivated
“CRRI2564-T12775 · Charleston Road Registry Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-251 NA2631T-T98247 · Registry Services, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-251 TT2652T-T49229 · Toddler Logic, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-251”ICANN
“.wear · Lifestyle · “Dress your domain.””Link Freedom Group
- Band: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a clean English suffix that composes naturally with common fashion vocabulary (active.wear, street.wear, work.wear), which gives it more end-use charm than an arbitrary keyword; some direct-to-consumer apparel brands could plausibly adopt such a name as a primary identity over the next 5 years. But by analogy with existing apparel-keyword TLDs such as .clothing, .fashion, .style, and .shoes (analogy, not asserted data), these strings have tended to see modest, price-sensitive registration behavior and thin aftermarkets, with mainstream fashion brands overwhelmingly staying on .com or their own brand identities; that pattern is the reason .wear does not reach the 50-69 strong-niche band, where sustained demand and routine primary-identity use would be required. It sits above the 10-29 vanity band because the suffix-hack construction gives it genuine, repeatable naming utility for a real commercial vertical rather than joke or event-driven appeal. Applicant facts are neutral context only: the announced applicant filed a very large portfolio in the round, which says little either way about dedicated category marketing for this one string. Main market uncertainty: whether the domain-hack construction (word + .wear) actually converts into paid primary-identity adoption by funded apparel brands, or remains a redirect/vanity layer on top of a .com. Verified specifics beyond the facts block are unknown; all outcome claims here are qualitative and analogy-flagged.