What’s coming next
The set of domain endings isn’t fixed — it grows in waves, and the next wave is forming now.
The short version
Almost every TLD you can register today arrived in one of two eras: the originals (.com, .net, .org and the country codes, 1985 onward) and the 2012 ICANN expansion, which added over a thousand new endings — everything from .app to .pizza. ICANN has been preparing the next application round for years, with applications opening in 2026. New registries apply, survive evaluation (and sometimes auctions and lawsuits), and their TLDs then enter the root over the following years.
What the last wave teaches
Winners take years to mean something
.app and .dev launched in 2018–19 with a big registry behind them and clear audiences — they worked. Dozens of 2012-round TLDs with no story (.click-tier bargain endings) became spam farms instead. The lesson: a TLD succeeds when a real community adopts it, not when it merely exists.
Litigation is part of the process
The most contested string of the 2012 round, .web, sold at auction for $135 million and then spent nearly a decade in disputes before finally going live — the most extreme example of how slow the pipeline can be. (Yes, .web is real now.)
Early registration is a bet, not a bargain
New TLDs launch through sunrise (trademark holders), early-access (pay-to-jump-the-line), then general availability. Good names are genuinely available early — but you’re betting the TLD itself earns recognition. Most don’t.
What we’ll cover here
As the new round’s applications become public, this section will track the interesting strings — with the same opinionated treatment as the rest of the directory: who’s applying, what it’s for, and whether you should care.
In the meantime: pick from the 1,400+ endings that already exist. The perfect TLD arriving in three years doesn’t ship your project this year.