ICANN: 1,616 paid applications proceed; Reveal Day no later than 14 October

ICANN announced on 22 September 2026 that 1,616 new gTLD applications will proceed in the 2026 round. These are the applications for which payment has been received, which ICANN describes as a condition of proceeding. The submission window closed in August with 1,663 applications submitted, 47 more than the number now proceeding.

ICANN will publish the public-facing portions of the paid applications on Reveal Day, through its Application Publication and Statistics (APS) website. That publication is the first point at which the public can see which strings were applied for and which may be in contention with one another.

Absent extraordinary circumstances, ICANN expects Reveal Day no later than 14 October 2026, the nine-week limit set by the Applicant Guidebook. ICANN expects to announce the exact date early next week, together with timelines for the String Replacement Period, String Confirmation Day, and the Community Input and Objections Period.

The announcement also notes that some potential applicants have publicly disclosed strings they may have applied for, and states that ICANN is the only source of complete and verified application information. Every record on this tracker is a public claim of that kind. Each keeps its ICANN status as unpublished until it can be checked against ICANN’s Reveal Day publication.