Written by Jennifer Gore, Executive Director for the Brand Registry Group.

The next application window of the ICANN New gTLD Program is scheduled to open on April 30, 2026. All businesses and brand owners must now consider a question last confronted in 2012: whether to apply for a Brand Top-Level Domain (TLD). Since then, many famous companies have found great benefit in their TLDs, including Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and so many other members of the Brand Registry Group (BRG). Over the 14 years since the last application window, many successful companies have been born, and many new and different uses of the dotBrands have been conceived in the Domain Name System (DNS).

The Brand Registry Group focuses on the fundamental benefits of a dotBrand TLD versus. generic or geographic strings that garner public attention. DotBrands are neither marketing novelties nor defensive assets but can operate as proprietary namespaces at the root of the internet, enabling brand owners to exercise unprecedented control over digital identity, trust, and security on the DNS layer. This distinction is particularly relevant as the DNS ecosystem faces increasing abuse, authenticity challenges, and pressure to support verifiable digital identities.

What Makes a dotBrand Structurally Distinct: A dotBrand TLD is delegated exclusively to a single trademark holder. Unlike open or community TLDs, registration policies are ‘closed’ in that only the brand owner (and its permitted affiliates and licensees) may register domains under the dotBrand TLD.

From a governance perspective, this means:

• The registry operator and the registrant are functionally the same entity
• Policy enforcement occurs internally, not through third-party registrars
• The namespace is immune to cybersquatting, domain tasting, and trademark abuse

This structure shifts the DNS from a reactive enforcement model of disputes, takedowns, and monitoring to a preventive one, where abuse vectors are removed by design.

Security, Trust, and Abuse Mitigation: DNS abuse, particularly phishing, impersonation, and look-alike domains, has increased in both volume and sophistication over the past decade. DotBrands address this problem through namespace control instead of downstream enforcement.

Because every second-level domain is issued by the brand itself:

• Users can reliably assume that any domain on a Brand TLD is brand authentic
• Security controls (TLS, DNSSEC, DMARC, HSTS Preloading, SPF, DMARC) can be enforced uniformly by systems
• Attack surfaces created by third-party registrations and multi-vendors are eliminated

This is not theoretical. Financial institutions, manufacturers, and technology firms that operate dotBrands consistently cite risk reduction and trust signaling as primary motivations, often ahead of marketing considerations.

Operational and Infrastructure Use Cases: Contrary to early assumptions, many dotBrands are not consumer-facing first. Instead, they are used for internal, partner, and machine-to-machine infrastructure, where trust and control matter more than visibility. Examples include:

• Google using .google for product and service segmentation
• BMW deploying campaign-specific and regional domains under .bmw
• Barclays operating secure authentication and customer portals on .barclays

These deployments demonstrate that dotBrands function as controlled routing layers, not simply as alternative URLs.

Why the 2026 Round Matters: The upcoming application round is significant not only because of timing, but because of scarcity. ICANN has made no commitment to a regular cadence for future rounds. Historically, there has been a gap of more than a decade between application windows.

For brand owners, the 2026 round may represent:

• The only realistic opportunity in the near term to secure their dotBrand at the TLD level
• A chance to future-proof digital identity strategies amid increasing online regulation and fraud
• A way to develop a structural alternative to perpetual defensive domain registrations across hundreds of TLDs

Importantly, applying for a dotBrand does not require immediate public activation. Many 2012 applicants pursued a “strategic hold” model that allowed for delegating the TLD, establishing governance, and activating use cases gradually over time.

Governance and Policy Considerations: From an internet governance standpoint, dotBrands raise fewer systemic risks than open gTLDs as they:

• Do not increase competition for registrants
• Do not fragment linguistic or geographic naming conventions
• Reduce, rather than increase, DNS abuse

As such, dotBrands align closely with ICANN’s stated objectives around security, stability, and trust in the DNS. They also introduce a model where responsibility is clearly assigned: the brand registry is accountable for its namespace, its policies, and its technical operations.

DotBrands are best understood not as branding tools, but as both governed digital identity, infrastructure and private namespaces that are embedded at the highest level of the DNS. In an environment defined by rising abuse, authentication challenges, and pressure for trusted digital identity, their relevance has increased since 2012. With the ICANN 2026 TLD application window approaching, organizations that view the DNS as a strategic infrastructure solution rather than merely an address system will get to decide whether to take part in an opportunity for control of their brand’s digital identity at the internet root that is too good to miss!

To learn more about opportunities for dotBrands, please contact the Brand Registry Group.