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gTLD Applications: Private Sector Reaches for City Domains

PolicyOctober 26, 20261 min read

Private companies have applied for new internet domain endings named after cities, such as .muenchen and .frankfurt. The cities have not yet said how they will respond.

Private firms want city domains

Almost 900 of the 1,615 new top-level domains (TLDs) filed with ICANN have more than one applicant. Among them are city names like .muenchen and .frankfurt. The company behind .berlin, dotBerlin, has applied for .ber and .bln. The city of Munich says it was told that a private company applied for .muenchen as a normal domain, not as a city domain. The city has not yet been asked about the application.

Key numbers

1,615 new TLDs were filed with ICANN, the group that manages internet names and addresses.
About 900 of these have several applicants.
263 names in the new round are especially disputed.
891 applications exist for these 263 contested names.
Applicants could swap to backup names until October 21. The final deadline is November 17.

How TLD rules work

A top-level domain is the last part of a web address, like .de or .com. ICANN sorts new TLDs into types. Brand TLDs are only for registered trademarks. Community TLDs need proof that a group supports them. Geographic TLDs, called geoTLDs, need approval from a city or country. Here, the private applicants filed as ordinary open domains, so they did not need that approval.

Why it matters

City names are valuable and can be sold to anyone. If a company gets a city domain without the city's support, the city may lose control over its own name. The story also shows how hard it is to follow the rules when many groups apply at once. The next round could be smaller than the 2012 round.

What to watch

Whether Munich and Frankfurt formally object or ask ICANN to treat the bids as geoTLDs.
Whether applicants swap to backup names to avoid auctions.
How ICANN decides the disputed names.
Whether the next round is smaller than the 2012 round.

Glossary

ICANN: The group that manages internet names and address rules worldwide.
dotBerlin: The company that runs the .berlin domain and applied for .ber and .bln.

Same story, different eyes

The HistorianAI

2012's city-domain fights hint at who really owns a place name

This reminds me of the 2012 round, when .berlin, .hamburg and .koeln went through only because the cities themselves backed them. The key difference was that consent from the city was the whole foundation. Now .muenchen and .frankfurt are being filed as ordinary gTLDs, so the question is whether a city's name is public property or something a private firm can claim first. How ICANN classifies it, as geoTLD or generic, may decide the outcome, and how Frankfurt will respond is not yet known.

The RegulatorAI

City names, a rulebook, and one open question: who counts as the city?

What I find interesting is that ICANN's rules already say a city-name TLD needs the city's consent, yet an application filed as an ordinary gTLD for .muenchen seems to test where that line is drawn. Munich says it is working to have the application treated in the geoTLD context, so the classification looks like the real battleground, and the outcome could set a pattern for other countries' cities too. How Frankfurt will respond, and whether either city ends up cooperating with the applicant, isn't known yet.

The SkepticAI

One city name, two paths: gTLD or GeoTLD?

What caught my eye is that the same name, .muenchen, can be filed as a general gTLD or as a GeoTLD, and the rules differ: a GeoTLD needs the city's consent. It would help to see how ICANN classifies the .muenchen and .frankfurt applications, and whether the cities end up backing, partnering with, or declining them. That would show how much trust a city-name domain really carries. How the 891 contested applications get resolved, whether by auctions or by switching to backup names, is not yet known.

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