Rush and Distribution: A Sector Map of the 2026 Reveal Day

Introduction

Reveal Day has delivered an inventory both long awaited and, in many respects, surprising (ICANN announcement of 29 September 2026). The official export, as of 8 October, lists 1,614 primary applications, covering 986 distinct gTLDs and filed by 480 entities (announcement of 13 August 2026).

The comparison with 2012 is instructive. The first round drew 1,930 applications for 1,409 distinct gTLDs (ICANN announcement of 13 June 2012), at USD 185,000 per application (Applicant Guidebook 2012, section 1.5.1). Evaluation fees now stand at USD 227,000 (Applicant Guidebook 2026, section 1.1.2), an increase of 23%. Yet the number of applications has fallen by 16%, and the number of distinct gTLDs by 30%. Is price the explanation? Nothing could be less certain, as US inflation would no doubt also have to be taken into account. The decline is more likely due to the maturity of the market and to the many gTLDs of the 2012 vintage that never really found their audience.

Most remarkable of all, however, is that applicants are fewer but appear more determined, since they compete more often for the same gTLDs. Indeed, 55% of applications now face a competitor, compared with 39% in 2012.

Geography, unsurprisingly, leans towards North America (864 applications), far ahead of Europe (506) and Asia-Pacific (217). That said, figures can be misleading: Malta owes its 158 applications to a single applicant, Link Freedom Group. Indeed, it is concentration that stands out first, since four portfolio operators alone account for nearly 28% of all applications.

To go beyond a mere list, each gTLD has been assigned to a sector, according to the owner’s business for .BRAND applications and to the meaning of the word for generic terms. The classification is ours, and we must admit that the boundaries are sometimes porous: does .MIND belong to artificial intelligence (AI) or to wellbeing? It nonetheless reveals a demand largely driven by digital technology (I), while brands and territories draw a more nuanced map (II).

1 Demand driven by digital technology

The distribution of applications across sectors reveals a striking contrast between the appetite for generic terms and the more selective strategies pursued by trademark owners. Digital industries dominate the landscape, but the figures also expose significant differences in competitive intensity. Some sectors attract numerous applications for a relatively small number of strings, while others are characterised by a greater diversity of proposed gTLDs and fewer competing applicants. The following table illustrates these disparities.

Source: icann.org. Sector classification by the author.

1.1 Artificial intelligence, the centre of gravity of the round

In volume terms, AI accounts for only 121 applications. It nonetheless remains the most fiercely contested sector: seven applications out of ten face a competitor. The most coveted gTLD of the round is, moreover, .AGENT, with thirteen applicants, among them Google, Meta, OpenAI and a community applicant. Close behind come .ROBOT (9), .AGI and .MIND (7), then .MCP (5), named after the Model Context Protocol that links agents to one another.

The major players have, in addition, taken care to lock up their own signs: .OPENAI, .CHATGPT and .GPT for OpenAI, .GEMINI and .DEEPMIND for Google, .LLAMA and .METAAI for Meta, or again .CLAUDE and .ANTHROPIC. Where 2012 saw the rise of .APP or .CLOUD, applicants are now, very clearly, betting on an Internet of agents.

1.2 Technology, crypto-assets and media: the digital bedrock

Technology in the broad sense remains, for its part, the leading identifiable sector (274 applications). Demand there is twofold: terms familiar to developers (.API, .KEY, .CONNECT, .PORTAL) and a solid cohort of .BRAND applications from infrastructure players, from Cloudflare to Salesforce. Crypto-assets, for their part, show an undiminished appetite for naming (81 applications, including eleven for .BIT alone), while media are driven by the platforms (TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitch).

Finally, there remains the mass of short generic terms (414 applications): .HUB, .POP, .MAX, .HELLO. These words with no sectoral anchor, favoured by portfolio operators, are also the most contested. It must be acknowledged that the strategy here is less about serving a market than about occupying lexical ground.

2 Brands and territories: a more nuanced map

2.1 .BRAND gTLDs, a selective uptake

There are 333 .BRAND applications, gTLDs reserved for the exclusive use of a trademark owner and subject to Specification 13 of the registry agreement, that is, one in five. The figure is significant, without being massive. The United States supply 151 of them and Japan 61, true to a well-established tradition of brand domain names; France, by contrast, has only nine (Air Liquide, Atos, BPCE, CNP Assurances, Conex, Ledger, MBDA, Michelin and Sodexo). Banking and insurance, moreover, are strongly represented among brands (48 applications), which explains a remarkably low conflict rate: a bank’s name is rarely contested. Inditex, for its part, has filed a gTLD for almost each of its retail banners, from .BERSHKA to .ZARAHOME.

That being said, .BRAND status offers no shelter whatsoever from conflict. Eighteen brand applications do face a competitor, be it .ECHO (Amazon), .GPT (OpenAI), .FORCE (Salesforce) or .LENS (Google).

2.2 Territories in retreat, niches on the rise

The 2012 round gave pride of place to cities (.PARIS, .BERLIN, .NYC). This is no longer the case: only eighteen geographic applications, mostly European (.VIENNA, .FRANKFURT, .ROMA, .LUGANO, .QUÉBEC). The requirement of support from public authorities obviously explains the absence of competing applications. Internationalised domain names also remain marginal (21 applications, almost all in Chinese characters).

Conversely, some niches are clearly emerging, such as health (.THERAPY, .ZEN, .GYM) or the professions (.FIRM, .OFFICIAL), not forgetting, of particular interest to French readers, the community application for .AVOCAT (French for “lawyer”), reportedly filed by the Bar of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal, where one would rather have expected the Conseil National des Barreaux, the French national bar council. This could raise ethical, legal and even international trade issues (particularly with lawyers in other French-speaking countries).

3 Conclusion

Reveal Day thus paints a two-speed round: a genuine rush on the vocabulary of digital technology, where competition is fierce, and a more measured uptake of brand and geographic gTLDs. For trademark owners, therefore, the stakes are immediate. It is for them to check, without delay, that no applied-for gTLD reproduces or imitates their sign; the objection period will open on 17 November 2026 and close on 16 March 2027 (timeline published by ICANN), and the Legal Rights Objection will be the natural tool. Applicants themselves will still have to overcome the test of competing applications, which will be the subject of a forthcoming article.

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With the launch of the 2026 new gTLD round, IP Twins supports businesses in identifying potential risks, monitoring applications that may affect their trademarks and developing appropriate protection strategies, including the assessment of available objection mechanisms.