The Future of New gTLDs

## The 12-Year Assessment Twelve years after the first new gTLDs were delegated, an honest assessment produces a mixed verdict. The program achieved its core technical goal: the DNS root zone expanded from roughly 20 extensions to over 1,200 without breaking the internet. The namespace is genuinely larger. Competition among registry operators is real. Hundreds of extensions have found sustainable niches. What the program did not achieve was the democratization of the domain space that some advocates envisioned. .com's dominance persists. The majority of new gTLDs have single-digit thousands of registrations — a rounding error in the global domain count. The secondary market for new gTLD domains, with a handful of exceptions, never developed the depth and liquidity of the .com market. The question for the next decade: will the second application round and evolving internet infrastructure shift these dynamics? ## The 2026 Application Round ICANN's next new gTLD application round will launch applications in 2026, with evaluations running through 2027 and delegations beginning in 2028–2029. Several developments make this round structurally different from 2012: **More sophisticated applicants**: Companies applying in 2026 have 12 years of data on what worked and what didn't. Applications for extensions with proven demand are more likely; speculative applications to obscure categories are less common. **Improved back-end infrastructure**: The registry back-end market has matured dramatically. Registry operators can access sophisticated, cost-effective infrastructure from established providers without building from scratch. **Geographic diversity focus**: ICANN has made geographic diversity a priority for the 2026 round, with subsidies and simplified processes for applicants from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and other regions underrepresented in the 2012 round. This could produce meaningful growth in non-Latin-script extensions — expanding the truly global character of the internet. **IDN TLDs**: The 2026 round will include further expansion of internationalized domain names — extensions in Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, and other scripts. As internet penetration deepens in regions where Latin script is not native, IDN TLDs serve crucial accessibility functions. ## AI-Driven Search and the Address Bar Question One of the most consequential shifts for the domain name system is the rise of AI-powered search interfaces. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, and similar tools answer questions directly — reducing the fraction of internet usage that involves typing domain names into browser address bars. This shift cuts both ways for new gTLDs: **The risk**: If users increasingly navigate by AI query rather than domain address, the brand-signaling value of any domain extension diminishes. The new gTLD value proposition — that "brand.shop" communicates e-commerce intent — matters less if users discover brands through AI chat rather than URL direct navigation. **The opportunity**: AI search systems must retrieve information from somewhere. Well-structured domains remain the organizing layer beneath AI responses. A business with clear domain identity (brand.dev, product.app) may be easier for AI systems to categorize correctly, potentially improving AI-driven discoverability. The net effect is uncertain, but the trend toward non-URL navigation suggests that the window in which domain extensions carry maximum marketing value may be narrowing. ## Browser-Level Changes Browser developers — particularly Chrome and Firefox — have experimented with de-emphasizing the URL bar in user interfaces, showing only the domain name without the full address. In some tests, browsers showed only the registered domain (e.g., "stripe.com") and hid the subdomain and path. These changes are relevant for new gTLDs because they affect how extensions appear in the browser chrome. An extension displayed as "brand.shop" in the URL bar communicates clearly. But if browsers compress or de-emphasize URLs further, the extension's brand value in that context diminishes. ## The Long-Term Role of Non-.com Extensions Several structural trends suggest new gTLDs will grow in relevance over the coming decade, despite the current dominance of .com: **Saturation of .com availability**: The desirable .com namespace is fully registered. New businesses have no path to acquiring a matching .com without paying substantial aftermarket premiums. As this reality compounds across millions of new businesses globally, the psychological barrier to non-.com adoption lowers. **Generational shift**: Users who grew up with .app, .io, and .dev as normal elements of the technology landscape have none of the .com preference assumptions of older users. As these cohorts become the primary internet user base, extension diversity normalizes. **International markets**: In markets where internet adoption is still growing — Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia — the .com monopoly was never as deeply established as in the US and Western Europe. New gTLDs and IDN extensions may achieve parity or dominance in these markets. **Infrastructure embedding**: As more brand TLDs embed their extensions in product ecosystems — apps, IoT devices, internal corporate infrastructure — the diversity of extensions that users encounter as "normal" increases. ## What Domain Buyers Should Do Now For organizations making domain strategy decisions today: 1. **Secure your .com if you can**: The trust and recognition value of .com remains real. If you can acquire your desired .com at a reasonable price, do so. 2. **Consider new gTLDs for descriptive secondary domains**: "brand.com" plus "product.app" is a stronger dual-extension strategy than brand.com alone for technology products. 3. **Watch the 2026 round for specific strings**: If a string you want is under application in the 2026 round, monitor the process. Extensions that pass evaluation and launch in 2028–2029 may represent opportunities. 4. **Don't speculate widely across new extensions**: The data does not support building large new gTLD portfolios outside the proven top tier. Focus any investment in extensions with demonstrated adoption. Use TLD Knowledge Quiz to identify the right extension for your specific use case, and revisit this series as the 2026 application round develops. See What Are New gTLDs? for the foundational context, and New gTLD Market Statistics 2026 for current market data.