Since April 30, 2026, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has been accepting applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). For the first time since 2012, companies, brand owners, and organizations now have the opportunity to secure their own domain extension. The application deadline is August 12, 2026.

There are currently just under 1,600 active top-level domains worldwide. More than 1,200 of these were created during the 2012 launch round. These include classic country-code extensions such as .at or .de, geographic extensions such as .berlin, .hamburg, or .london, generic terms such as .insurance, .shop, or .auto, as well as brand extensions such as .bmw, .ferrero, or .lidl. With the new 2026 application round, the range of available domain extensions will be expanded once again.

For companies, this increasingly raises the strategic question of the benefits of having their own brand-specific domain extension. In light of growing digital threats such as phishing, domain spoofing, and trademark abuse, having a proprietary top-level domain offers significant security and trust benefits. Since only the owner can register domains within their own extension, numerous risks can be effectively mitigated at the DNS level.

Furthermore, a proprietary extension enables clear and consistent domain structures—for example, for products, regions, or business units. Examples include product.brand, de.brand, or careers.brand.

In the long term, a proprietary top-level domain becomes a digital anchor of trust: customers and partners can be sure they are actually communicating with the official brand—and not with a deceptively similar imitation address.