ICANN has confirmed that 1,616 applications will proceed in its 2026 new generic top-level domain round, establishing the first firm measure of demand for the program before applicants and proposed strings are disclosed.

Forty-seven of the 1,663 submitted applications did not reach the paid-application stage. ICANN said in its September 22 announcement that the 1,616 proceeding applications are those for which it received the required evaluation fee. The application window closed August 12 after 15 weeks.

The resulting total is about 3% below the number initially submitted. ICANN had previously reported only that it received more than 1,600 primary applications because the final count depended on applicants completing payment.

The identities of applicants and their requested strings remain undisclosed. ICANN plans to publish the public portions of the paid applications on Reveal Day through its Application Publication and Statistics system, which draws public-facing information from the TLD Application Management System. The disclosure will make it possible to assess which companies and organizations account for the applications, how heavily applications are concentrated among major portfolio applicants, and which strings attracted multiple applicants.

ICANN expects Reveal Day to occur no later than October 14, nine weeks after the application window closed, absent extraordinary circumstances. It said it expects to announce the date and subsequent program milestones early next week.

Reveal Day will also provide the first picture of direct string contention. ICANN will publish applied-for strings and initial contention sets involving identical strings. Other forms of contention can emerge later through string-similarity evaluation, singular/plural determinations and successful string-confusion objections.

The program also provides a 14-day replacement period after Reveal Day for eligible applicants that included replacement strings in their applications. A replacement cannot create new contention or expand an existing contention set. ICANN currently projects String Confirmation Day for November, when it will publish the updated list of strings and contention sets following replacements.

The 1,616 paid applications establish the scale of the round, but the competitive structure will remain unclear until Reveal Day exposes who applied, for what, and where applicants are pursuing the same strings.