.well
Is .well a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.well is contested: 4 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are Identity Digital, XYZ Registry, Intercap and Link Freedom Group. GoDaddy Registry named .well as a backup string for its .zen application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup. .top (Zhongze) named .well as a backup string for its .move 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 four already run TLDs, 26.77M names between them. One runs one of .well's closest 2012 strings: Identity Digital .care. Link Freedom Group runs none.
Will names sell?
A friendly wellness-word ending that makes clever marketing names, but most serious brands will keep it as a sidekick, not their main 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. .well’s closest 2012 strings hold .fit 81K, .health 61K and .care 48K.
The nearest 2012 strings, and how many names each holds today
The closest 2012 string, .fit, held 81,056 names, June 2026. .health held 61,435; .care held 47,784. Chosen by AI from every string in the 2012 round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet: a very short, everyday English word whose ordinary meaning is soft and adverbial rather than a hard category, sold as a wellness-flavored identity that any coach, studio, app or supplement brand can bend to fit, so it lives or dies on evocative branding rather than on being the obvious noun for an industry.
Same buyer and same wellness-authority job — practitioners, clinics and consumer health brands putting their primary identity on the string — but it is the definitional category noun where the target is a vaguer, more lifestyle-toned word, so it carries more inherent credibility and more regulatory/trust baggage than the target's bet does.
Same bet on a tiny, warm, semantically loose common word that reads as a promise rather than a category, monetized across health, wellness and services buyers who use it as the second half of a phrase-domain rather than as a directory of an industry.
Where they meet elsewhere
Identity Digital and XYZ Registry face each other in 77 contests this round, .well included.
- Identity Digital × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Link Freedom Group
- Identity Digital × GoDaddy Registry
- Link Freedom Group × XYZ Registry
- Identity Digital × Intercap
wellness, self-care, and lifestyle brands (spas, supplements, fitness apps, coaching, hospitality) plus marketers wanting verb-plus-well wordplay names like sleep.well or eat.well as campaign or redirect domains.
What a .well domain is
.well is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. 4 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .well domain extension real yet?
.well 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 .well domain?
You can’t yet. A .well 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 .well was .fit, delegated on 9 January 2015.
Is .well a real TLD?
Not yet. .well is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .well is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- 2 applicants · first recordedICANN
- 3 applicants · first recordedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · now confirmedICANN
- Link Freedom Group · first recordedLink Freedom Group
The source’s 6 linesHide the lines
HKZI2636T-T95610 · Hong Kong Zhongze International Limited · replacement string of .move · Deactivated IRI2679T-T81159 · Intercap Registry Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-252 LFGL2683T-T18553 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-252 NA2631T-T43068 · Registry Services, LLC · replacement string of .zen · Deactivated SS2654T-T59410 · Hair Apparent, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-252 XL2625T-T97751 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary · contention set 2026-252
The source’s 4 linesHide the lines
IRI2679T-T81159 · Intercap Registry Inc. · primary · contention set 2026-252 LFGL2683T-T18553 · Link Freedom Group Ltd · primary · contention set 2026-252 SS2654T-T59410 · Hair Apparent, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-252 XL2625T-T97751 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary · contention set 2026-252
“.well · Lifestyle · “Done right, every time.””Link Freedom Group
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. The string is a short, positive English word with two pulls: the wellness/lifestyle industry (matching the applicant's published 'Lifestyle' category) and natural adverb wordplay (live.well, sleep.well, be.well) that suits campaigns and product lines. By analogy (flagged as analogy) with word-TLDs like .life, .fit, and .health, generic lifestyle strings can attract steady registration volume, but wellness businesses have largely kept .com or category strings as primary identities, and left-of-dot wordplay domains tend to serve as marketing redirects rather than home addresses. It is not in the 50-69 band because there is no sign of sustained primary-identity demand for this string yet, and the wellness category already has competing namespaces, so any adoption over the next 5 years likely rides on price and novelty rather than brand necessity. It is not in the 10-29 band because the underlying market is large and durable, the word is broadly positive rather than jokey, and the adverb construction gives it genuine, repeatable naming utility beyond one-off vanity use. Applicant context, stated neutrally: the applicant filed a very large portfolio of strings in the round, which says little about focused category marketing for this one string; I weight that neutrally on adoption. Main market uncertainty: whether wellness and consumer-health brands will accept a soft lifestyle word as a credible trust signal for their primary domain, or treat .well purely as campaign inventory.