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ICANN maps out new gTLD timeline

Kevin Murphy, March 9, 2026, 17:24:28 (UTC), Domain Policy

ICANN’s 85th public meeting kicked off in Mumbai at the weekend, the last community face-to-face before the next round of new gTLDs kicks off, and the Org took the time to spell out exactly what is expected to happen and when.

Surprisingly, given ICANN’s track record, it will hit its target of April 2026 to open the doors to applications. Unsurprisingly, given ICANN’s track record, it’s picked April 30 — the last possible day of its promised window — to do so.

The application window will remain open for 104 days. Applicants will have until August 12 to file their paperwork. It doesn’t matter when they hit submit; it’s not first-come, first-served.

Then, the process goes into quiet mode for at least two months while ICANN filters through the applications. If there’s about the same number of applications at the 2012 round — about 2,000 — ICANN reckons Reveal Day could come before ICANN 87, which begins in Muscat October 17.

So far, the timeline closely follows the 2012 round, but this time there’s a new wrinkle — applicants can change their gTLD strings to preselected “replacement strings” if they want to.

From Reveal Day, they’ll have 14 days to swap their strings if, for example, they find themselves in a contention set they don’t like the look of or if they get the vibe that they’re probably face objections.

After those two weeks are up, its String Confirmation day, expected some time in November. From that moment, the applicants are locked into their string of choice.

That’s also the day when the timer starts on the objections period, 104 days in which companies and organizations can object to applications based on criteria such as intellectual property rights, the public interest, and community rights.

Governments can also object on essentially any basis, as long as it’s well-articulated. Unilateral GAC Early Warnings are available, but a full consensus of the Governmental Advisory Committee would be needed to stand a chance at nuking an application outright.

The objection period should end some time next February. While that’s going on, some time in December, ICANN will conduct the Prioritization Draw, a lottery to decide the order in which applications will be processed.

The 2012 draw was important because the gTLDs that were first out of the traps had a measurable first-mover advantage in terms of speculative registrations. With hundreds of gTLDs now on the market, I believe it will be less important this time around.

After the draw, applicants will have to wait half a year before they are finally notified which contention sets, if any, they fit into, after the results of the String Similarity Review have been published.

ICANN has yet to select the panel for this review or create its detailed guidelines, but it’s expect to name it chosen vendor some time in Q2.

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