ICANN published the applied-for strings for its 2026 round of new generic top-level domains on 7 October 2026, a step it calls Reveal Day. A generic top-level domain, in the distribution copy of the announcement, is the part of an internet address that comes after the last dot. The application window was 30 April to 12 August 2026.
The release’s snapshot, as of 7 October, lists 1,615 applications: 333 brand, 16 community-based, 15 self-identified geographic names, and 51 from Applicant Support Program applicants. By region it counts 16 applications from Africa, 218 from Asia/Australia/Pacific, 506 from Europe, 11 from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 864 from North America. It also counts 21 applications for internationalized domain names and 9 for variants. ICANN’s statistics API, generated at 15:41 UTC that day, reports the same 1,615 applications, all with status Active, from 481 applicants.
“Reveal Day marks an important milestone for the next expansion of the Domain Name System,” said Kurtis Lindqvist, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICANN, in the release.
OpenAI’s 15 strings
ICANN’s application listing, searched on the applicant name OPENAI, returns 15 active applications from OPENAI OPCO, LLC. Each one is in Pre-Evaluation Processing. The primary strings are agent, agi, asi, chatgpt, codex, daybreak, deploy, evals, gpt, mcp, model, oai, openai, skill, and voice. The listing tags chatgpt, codex, gpt, oai, and openai as Brand. The other ten carry no type tag in the fields returned.
Who else applied for the same labels
A contention set, in ICANN’s FAQ (last updated June 2026), is “a group of applications for gTLD strings that are identical, variants of one another, or similar in appearance, sound, or meaning.”
ICANN’s preliminary contention-sets file lists 13 applications for agent, including OPENAI OPCO, LLC and Meta Registry Holdings LLC. It lists 7 for agi and 5 for asi, and OpenAI is in both. The same file lists 3 applications for gpt, including OpenAI, and 3 for intelligence.
The Verge, in David Pierce’s 7 October article, reports the same 1,615 applications and 481 applicants, and says OpenAI applied for 15 top-level domains. Its contender counts differ: ten companies for .agent, seven for .agi, and six for .asi. The agi count matches the file. The agent and asi counts do not. The Verge also says four companies applied for .intelligence, where the file lists three, and that Meta is one of two applicants for .superintelligence. That string has no row in the contention file. The Verge counts 345 brand applications. The ICANN release counts 333.
Why a contested string waits
After Reveal Day, an applicant who filed a replacement string has two weeks to switch to it, if eligible. ICANN then publishes the final string list and an updated contention-set list on String Confirmation Day, 17 November 2026. That publication starts the Community Input and Objections Period. The community-input page says the public can comment after String Confirmation Day, and that evaluators may consider comments from the formal period of 104 days after that day.
A string with several applicants stays in a contention set through that update. The FAQ page indexes later questions on how a finalized set is resolved and when an auction is required. The release, the community-input page, and that FAQ do not give a date when a new gTLD from this round can go live. The 2012 round, the release says, added more than 1,200 unique new gTLDs.
Which numbers to use
For .agent, .agi, and .asi, the contention file’s counts are 13, 7, and 5. The Verge’s 10, 7, and 6 are that outlet’s counts. OpenAI’s 15 strings are the ones the listing returns for OPENAI OPCO, LLC.
The Campfire
No commentsNobody has pulled up a log by this one yet. Be the first to say what you make of it.
Held for the desk. It appears after a look.