ICANN sets Reveal Day for 7 October

ICANN announced on 29 September 2026 that Reveal Day for the 2026 new gTLD round will be 7 October 2026. At 18:00 UTC that day it will publish, on the 2026 Round Application Publication and Statistics website, the list of applications proceeding through the program: the entities that applied, all applied-for primary strings with any variant or replacement strings, the list of contention sets, and the public portions of each application.

The announcement also sets the milestones that follow:

• Replacement Period, 8 October (00:01 UTC) to 21 October (23:59 UTC). Applicants that named a replacement string when they applied may switch to it during these two weeks, and only then. A replacement string cannot be used if it is identical to another applied-for primary or replacement string, and ICANN notes it could still end up in contention later in the process.
• String Confirmation Day, 17 November. ICANN publishes the final list of applied-for strings and an updated list of contention sets.
• Refund window to 27 November, 23:59 UTC. Applicants that withdraw by then receive 65 percent of the gTLD evaluation fee paid.
• Community Input and Objections Period, 17 November 2026 to 16 March 2027. Input may come through application comments, GAC Member Early Warnings, singular/plural notifications and objections. 2026 Round operations pause for ICANN’s office closure from 19 December 2026 to 4 January 2027, and ICANN says that pause has been factored into the period.
• Prioritization Draw, first half of 2027. It sets the order in which applications and contention sets are processed after the String Evaluation Stage, which ICANN expects to last 180 days. The date is still to be determined.

Every record on this tracker is a public claim made before ICANN’s publication. Each keeps its ICANN status as unpublished until it can be checked against the Reveal Day list.