.白酒
Is .白酒 a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .白酒, 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
Baijiu is big business in China, but Chinese companies rarely build on Chinese-script domains, so real demand should stay thin.
baijiu distilleries, liquor brands, and drinks marketers in mainland China wanting a Chinese-script label for campaigns or defensive registrations
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round; a Chinese-script IDN (“baijiu”, A-label xn--9wy858c). Their catalog line: “China's fiery spirit, poured at every celebration.”
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.
Both are a single named category of distilled spirit used as the whole namespace — the bet is that producers, distributors and retailers of one liquor type will re-identify under their category noun rather than under a broad drinks or commerce string.
Same bet in the same script: a native-script consumer product-category noun whose entire addressable market is one language's industry, so it lives or dies on whether Chinese-market brands will put primary identity on a Chinese-character TLD.
A beverage-category generic sold to the makers and sellers of that beverage, but the bet is broader and more global — an international trade with appellation politics rather than one country's product class.
What a .白酒 domain is
.白酒 is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under Commerce. Nobody is chasing .白酒 today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .白酒 domain extension real yet?
.白酒 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 .白酒 domain?
You can’t yet. A .白酒 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 .白酒 was .vodka, delegated on 31 March 2014.
Is .白酒 a real TLD?
Not yet. .白酒 is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .白酒 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
“.白酒 (baijiu) · Agriculture & Food · “China's fiery spirit, poured at every celebration.””Journey To The West Corporation
- Band 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The underlying industry is genuinely large — baijiu is a dominant spirits category in China with major national brands — but by analogy with existing Chinese-script IDN TLDs, which have seen registrations driven by promotions and defensive buys rather than primary-identity use, a single-product IDN like .白酒 is likely to attract mostly defensive and speculative registrations over the next 5 years. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no sign of volume demand or brand-signal value: Chinese businesses overwhelmingly anchor identity on ASCII domains plus platform storefronts (WeChat, Tmall, Douyin), and input/typing friction for IDN URLs compounds this — an inference from analogy, not from figures. It is not in the 1-9 band because a real, well-capitalized industry exists whose distilleries plausibly register names defensively or for cultural marketing campaigns. Regulatory usability inside mainland China (registry accreditation for in-country hosting) is a qualitative gating dynamic for any China-targeted TLD. Main market uncertainty: whether any major distillery would adopt a 品牌.白酒 address as a visible campaign or primary identity rather than treating the TLD as defensive-only.