.直播
Is .直播 a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
Nobody is chasing .直播, 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
The word for "livestream" is hot in China, but streamers build on platforms, not their own websites, so demand stays thin and speculative.
Chinese-language livestream hosts, MCN talent agencies, and live-commerce merchants wanting a native-script address, plus domain investors speculating on China's livestream economy.
In Journey To The West's published portfolio of 323 strings submitted in the ICANN 2026 round; a Chinese-script IDN (“livestream”, A-label xn--z6ut02b). Their catalog line: “Commerce and entertainment, broadcast live.”
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 in the same script and market: a plain Chinese common noun naming a digital-entertainment vertical, sold to Chinese consumer-internet content companies on the wager that a category word — not a brand — can carry primary identity.
The literal semantic twin — a generic activity noun for broadcasting-as-it-happens, betting that broadcasters and event/content operators will hang their identity on the verb of what they do rather than on their own name.
Same shape of bet — Chinese-language generic noun for a media/entertainment sector aimed at the same registrant pool — but it is a broad umbrella category rather than a specific activity that defines an operator's whole business model.
What a .直播 domain is
.直播 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 .直播 today. The applicants that claimed it are out.
Is the .直播 domain extension real yet?
.直播 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 .直播 domain?
You can’t yet. A .直播 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 .直播 was .游戏, delegated on 23 October 2013.
Is .直播 a real TLD?
Not yet. .直播 is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because an applicant claimed .直播 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
“.直播 (livestream) · Digital & Retail · “Commerce and entertainment, broadcast live.””Journey To The West Corporation
- The semantic match is strong — livestreaming and live commerce are major sectors in China — but the buyers it names are the least domain-dependent audience imaginable: creators and merchants operate inside super-app platforms (short-video and e-commerce ecosystems) where an independent website is rarely the primary identity. By analogy with existing Chinese-script gTLDs such as .在线 and .商城 (flagged as analogy), Chinese IDN TLDs have tended to see registration activity driven by speculation and defensive buys rather than sustained primary-identity use, and typing han-script domains adds friction that keeps organic adoption low. That places it in the 10-29 band: memorable and on-trend, with shallow demand tied to the sector's heat rather than genuine namespace pull. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no evident path to volume registrations or a real brand signal outside speculation, and not in the 1-9 band because the category is genuinely large and some registration demand from agencies, studios, and investors is plausible. Main market uncertainty: whether China's live-commerce businesses ever shift meaningful identity to independent web domains at all, versus staying platform-native for the next 5 years.