In a recent press release ICANN has stated that they will publish the list of applicants for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) on April 30th.

Previously many had spoken of a “big reveal” on May 1st, though that would have coincided with a public holiday in many countries and might have been “missed”.

However ICANN CEO, Rod Beckstrom, claims that the organisation had always planned to publish the list two weeks after the application window closed:

“Our plan always has been to publish the list of applied-for strings approximately two weeks after the close of the April 12th application window,” said Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN. “Setting a target date gives people the opportunity to plan for this highly anticipated event.”

Whether ICANN will be able to stick to the now published date of April 30th is debatable and even their own press release suggests that they aren’t 100% confident that they’ll be able to meet the target date they’ve set.

Beckstrom also noted that if ICANN receives an overwhelming number of applications to process, publication of the list of strings could be postponed.

The organisation has been criticised recently for its punctuality with respect to publishing documents and materials, while the IPC’s latest comments on Conflicts of Interest reveal a level of frustration with public participation:

The IPC has a strong interest in improvement of ICANN’s conflict of interest policy.

However, it finds itself unable to offer substantive comments at this time for the following reasons.

I guess we’ll know (or we won’t) in the next few weeks.