Earliest brand TLDs could go live late 2027, says LEMARIT executive
in plain words
Brand domain endings are web addresses like .echo that a company can own for its own name. A company that runs a registry service says the first ones could be ready at the earliest by late 2027. Applicants face a deadline to change their backup text in October.
Full summary
A registry The central database and system of a top-level domain, or loosely the organization that runs it. Full definition of registry service provider, LEMARIT, says the first dotBRAND extensions could become reachable late 2027 at the earliest. Martin Küchenthal, the company's managing director, gave the answers in a written interview published by Domain Brief on 16 October 2026. The interview also covers what a brand extension costs per year and why many brands from the 2012 round The first round of ICANN's New gTLD Program, which opened for applications in 2012. Full definition of 2012 round ended their contracts.
In the new round, ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers The nonprofit that coordinates the global DNS and gTLD policy. Full definition of ICANN published the applications on 7 October. It counted 1,615 applications for further top-level domains. Of these, 333 were dotBRAND applications, meaning brand extensions. Germany produced 46 applications for top-level domains, and six of them were dotBRAND applications.
applicant An organization that has applied to ICANN to run a new gTLD. Full definition of applicant in a contention set face a choice. Brand applicants may switch to a replacement string A backup string an applicant can switch to shortly after Reveal Day. Full definition of replacement string until 21 October, and later they may ask to add words from the goods and services list of their trademark. Küchenthal describes two kinds of contention. In one, two dotBRAND applicants compete, as with .echo, which Amazon and the registry Echo Domain filed. In the other, a brand applicant competes with an open applicant, as with .easy, where EasyGroup filed a dotBRAND application while the registrar A company that registers domain names for customers with the registry. Full definition of registrar Aruba and the newly formed Link Freedom Group Maltese domain company, affiliated with the .link registry operator Nova Registry, that applied for 158 new gTLDs in ICANN's 2026 round. Full definition of Link Freedom Group each want to run .easy as a generic extension. He says no single approach is clearly better, and that the outcome will depend on how deep the applicants’ pockets are.
Since the reveal day, applicants in the same contention set may not discuss their applications with each other, and negotiations toward settlements are banned until the contention is resolved. The String Confirmation Day follows on 17 November, when the final list of strings is due.