- Registrations hit a record 411.6 million by September 2026, up 8.7% in a year, the fastest growth in five years.
- .SI registrations jumped from 3,515 in August to 46,066 in September 2026 after the U.S. government adopted the "super intelligence" label.
- .WEB is expected to open to everyone in 2027, after Verisign announced its delegation in July 2026.
- ICANN's 2026 round drew 1,615 applications led by AI names like .AGENT, but the first new extensions aren't expected before 2028.
Every year the domain market tells a story, and, nearing year end, 2026 has told two at once. The first was steady: .COM, the oldest and most familiar extension, kept adding new names at a pace the registry had never seen before. The second came out of nowhere. A small country-code extension, Slovenia's .SI, became the most talked-about registration rush of the year in just a few days.
Behind those headlines, plenty of quieter changes were happening too. Low-cost extensions grew quickly, though many of their names were dropped again a year later. AI tools made it easier for people to build websites, which brought new buyers into the market. ICANN opened its first new extension round in more than a decade, and Verisign got ready to launch .WEB.
For domain investors and small businesses, these shifts affect real decisions: which names to buy, which to keep renewing and which extensions are worth watching. That's why we wanted a clear picture based on data.
In this report, we bring together official registry figures from Verisign and the Domain Name Industry Brief (DNIB), data from Dynadot's own marketplace and investor survey, and what experienced investors are discussing on forums like NamePros. We start with the key statistics, walk through seven trends that shaped 2026, and finish with what the data points to for 2027.
Important Domain Name Statistics in 2026
Here are ten key domain name statistics that show where the domain market stands in 2026:
- Domain registrations reached a record 411.6 million worldwide by the end of September 2026, an increase of 8.7% in one year.
- The classic .COM remains the most popular extension, with 169.8 million registrations, about eight times more than any other extension.
- Verisign processed a record 13.1 million new .COM and .NET registrations in Q3 2026, up from 10.6 million a year earlier.
- New generic top-level domains (new gTLDs) reached 56.6 million registrations, a 32% increase year over year.
- China's .CN leads the country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) with 20.9 million registrations.
- .XYZ was the fastest-growing large extension, rising from 5.9 million to 10.2 million names in one year.
- Some fast-growing extensions keep few of their owners: .TOP's estimated renewal rate was just 12.5% in Q3 2026.
- The typical domain on Dynadot's marketplace sold for 18.87 in Q2, 2026, almost the same as a year earlier (18.85).
- New .SI registrations jumped from 3,515 in August to 46,066 in September 2026.
- ICANN received 1,615 applications for new extensions in its 2026 round, with .AGENT the most contested at 13 applicants.
What Are the 10 Biggest Domain Extensions in 2026?
.COM is still by far the largest extension, and country codes make up half of the top 10. The DNIB Quarterly Report for Q3 2026, the industry's standard count of registered names, ranks them as shown in Visual 1.
The list has changed a little over the last year. In the Q3 2025 DNIB report, .XYZ was ninth and Brazil's .BR held the last spot. Twelve months later, .XYZ has moved up to seventh, .TOP has joined the top 10 and .BR has dropped out.
A large extension doesn't always keep its owners, though. The Q3 2026 report estimates that 86.3% of .ORG names renew, while some of the fastest-growing extensions renew far less often, as Trend 2 shows.
.COM is adding new names faster than at any point in Verisign's history. For an extension that has been around since the beginning of the commercial internet, that's a notable result.
How many new .COM domains were registered in 2026?
According to Verisign's Q3 2026 results, the registry processed 13.1 million new .COM and .NET registrations in the third quarter. That beat the previous record of 12.7 million, set just one quarter earlier.
In total, .COM and .NET now hold 182.5 million names, up 6.1% in a year. Growth has been strong enough that Verisign raised its forecast for 2026 again, to between 6.5% and 7%.
Our own platform shows the same pattern. In our Q1 2026 Domain Intelligence Report, .COM stayed the most registered extension on Dynadot, with registrations up 9% year over year.
What was the renewal rate in 2026?
A renewal rate is the share of expiring domains that their owners pay to keep for another term. Most .COM owners keep their names: Verisign's final renewal rate for Q2 2026 was 75.2%, and it expects 74.3% for Q3, a little lower than the 75.4% recorded a year earlier.
That still leaves roughly one in four expiring .COM names unrenewed. Many of them come back to the market through expired domain auctions and closeout domains, which is good news for buyers.
What's driving the demand for domain registrations?
On Verisign's Q3 2026 earnings call, CEO Jim Bidzos pointed to three factors: registrars promoting domains through Verisign's marketing programs, new businesses getting started, and AI tools. As he put it, "AI tools are making content and website creation faster and easier."
He also said that, based on Verisign's analysis, most new registrations come from people building an online presence, a group that has historically renewed well.
How does the .COM price increase affect domain owners?
On November 1, 2026, the wholesale price of a .COM domain will increase. Verisign announced the change in April, giving registrars six months' notice.
Each registrar sets its own retail price, so the change won't look the same everywhere. It's worth checking your renewal costs for 2027, especially if you hold a large portfolio.
The fastest growth in 2026 came from low-cost extensions. Many of the names they gained, however, are unlikely to be renewed.
Which domain extensions grew the fastest in 2026?
We compared DNIB's counts for the largest extensions from September 2025 to September 2026. The counts are rounded, so the percentages are approximate. Visual 2 shows each extension's growth next to how it moved on Dynadot.
As a group, new gTLDs grew 32% in that year. That's much faster than .COM and .NET at 6.1% and country codes at 4.6%.
Why do cheap extensions lose so many names?
Low first-year prices make it easy to register names in bulk, and many of those names are never renewed. DNIB estimates a renewal rate of 12.5% for .TOP in Q3 2026 and 17.5% for .XYZ in its Q2 2026 report.
You can already see the effect in the totals. .TOP went from 6.5 million names in June to 6.3 million in September, so it shrank over the summer even though it grew over the full year.
How does Dynadot's data compare?
On Dynadot, the fastest growers looked a little different. .DIGITAL had the biggest jump in Q1 2026, climbing from 56th to 9th place, while .INFO rose from 17th to 3rd. .INFO and .TOP grew quickly in both the industry data and ours.
.XYZ is the clearest difference. It grew strongly across the industry but slipped slightly on Dynadot.
In our April 2026 investor survey, many respondents saw new gTLDs as the fastest-growing category, yet many also said they personally registered more legacy extensions, such as .COM, than the year before.
The typical domain sale stayed about the same in 2026. The higher prices went to names with a particular structure: short, without hyphens and, in some cases, made of numbers.
How much does a typical domain sell for?
Our Q2 2026 Domain Intelligence Report looked at more than 54,000 completed sales on Dynadot's marketplace between April and June. The median sale was $18.87, nearly the same as a year earlier.
What makes a domain sell for more?
Three patterns stood out in the Q2 data.
Short names. Names with one to five characters sold for about 1.6 times the market average. Interestingly, the median price stayed at $18.87 for every length. A short name has a better chance of a high sale, but the typical short name still sells at the typical price. That's because big sales are rare: they pull up the average, but they barely move the median, which is the price in the middle of all sales.
Numbers and hyphens. Names made only of numbers averaged about 2.5 times the market. Hyphenated names went the other way, averaging about 0.7 times the market.
From our own experience, number domains also sell especially well in Asian markets. Numbers read the same in every language, so there's no language barrier for buyers, which makes them worth a look for investors.
Themes. A few topics sold above average: green energy (1.36x), agents and bots (1.17x) and general tech (1.14x).
AI tools are helping more people launch websites, and Verisign says this shows up in registrations. How much of the growth comes from AI hasn't been measured yet.
Is AI increasing demand for domain names?
Verisign links part of the growth to AI. On the Q3 2026 call, Bidzos told analysts that some registrars report AI as a factor, and that AI "clearly makes it easier to find a domain name, develop a website, and maintain a website."
Our survey points in a similar direction: 62% of respondents named startup and tech-sector demand as the main driver of growth. On our platform, developer-focused extensions also showed longer commitments. Multi-year registrations of .DEV grew 359%, and multi-year .APP activity rose 315%.
How much has the domain industry grown in the last five years?
The whole domain industry is growing faster now than at any point in the last five years. Based on DNIB's third-quarter reports for each year, total registrations moved like this:
| End of Q3 |
Total registrations |
Year-over-year growth |
| 2022 | 349.9M | +3.4% |
| 2023 |
359.3M |
+2.4% |
| 2024 | 362.3M | +0.8% |
| 2025 | 378.5M | +4.5% |
| 2026 | 411.6M | +8.7% |
Growth slowed to under 1% in 2024, then picked up to 4.5% in 2025 and 8.7% in 2026. That speed-up lines up with the spread of AI building tools. Many factors play a part, as Verisign notes, but the timing suggests AI is helping the whole industry, from .COM to newer extensions.
.AI is still the best-known extension for AI companies, and strong .AI names continue to sell well. At the same time, investors are becoming more selective about which .AI names have value.
High-value sales still happen. DNJournal's sales chart recorded Act.ai at $375,000 in October, and Bot.ai sold for $1.2 million in March.
On NamePros, Mike Sullivan describes the shift as an "AI domain hangover": names that simply add "AI" to a keyword are losing value, while short names connected to a real buyer are holding up. For context, .AI passed 1 million registrations in January 2026.
Slovenia's .SI had the fastest registration spike of 2026. For the basics, such as what .SI is and how to register one, see Why .SI Domains Are Gaining Attention in 2026.
How fast did .SI registrations grow?
The first wave of interest came this spring, when Recursive, an AI company focused on superintelligence, bought Recursive.si for $20,000.
The second and much bigger rush began after September 22, when the U.S. President told the UN General Assembly that the U.S. government would refer to AI as "super intelligence," or SI. He made the change official by executive order on September 29.
According to CircleID's report on the surge, .SI recorded 46,066 new registrations in September. Registry figures cited in our .SI post show 3,515 for August, so September was about 13 times higher. For one week, from September 23 to 29, more new .SI names were registered than new .AI names. By October 28, there were 460,818 .SI domains in total.
Two sources of new extensions are coming: .WEB, which is expected to launch in 2027, and ICANN's new gTLD round, which will take longer.
When does .WEB launch?
In July 2026, Verisign announced that .WEB had been delegated into the internet's root zone, the step that lets a new extension go live. Verisign expects to open .WEB to everyone in 2027.
It could be an interesting opportunity for investors, so if you plan to register .WEB domains, it's worth having your list ready.
What did ICANN's 2026 round reveal?
On October 7, ICANN published the 2026 round's applications: 1,615 in total, including 333 from brands.
AI-related names feature heavily. .AGENT drew the most applicants, 13 in total, including Google, OpenAI and Meta. Other applied-for extensions include .AGI, .MCP, .LLM and .GPT, and Meta applied for .SUPERINTELLIGENCE. You can browse every application on ICANN's application search.
The process will take time. ICANN confirms the final list on November 17, 2026, objections are open until March 16, 2027, and a Prioritization Draw follows in the first half of 2027. The first new extensions could launch around Q2 2028. For comparison, the 2012 round received 1,930 applications and added 1,241 extensions.
Domain Investing Predictions for 2027
No registry or marketplace has published a formal forecast for 2027. The points below are our reading of the 2026 data, and none of them are guaranteed. Visual 3 lays out the dates already announced.
1. Registrations keep growing
Registrations grew in every quarter of 2026, and Verisign raised its forecast more than once. Growth may slow as the large group of 2026 names reaches its first renewal.
2. More names reach expired auctions
Verisign says first-time .COM renewals run in the mid-40% range, and some fast-growing extensions renew at much lower rates. With so many names registered in 2026, more are likely to expire in 2027 than in a typical year. Expired domain auctions are the place to watch.
3. .COM remains the center of the aftermarket
.COM made up 70.6% of orders on Dynadot's marketplace in Q2 2026.
4. .AI prices depend more on name quality
AI keyword names sold at the market average in Q2, while premium .AI sales continued. Short, specific .AI names are likely to keep doing better than keyword combinations.
5. .SI faces its first renewal season
Names registered in the September 2026 rush come up for renewal in fall 2027. Renewal rates will show how much of the demand was lasting. Could be an opportunity to acquire expired .SI domains that have potential.
6. .WEB opens to the public
.WEB will probably reach general availability next year.
7. New gTLD news, but no new gTLDs yet
Objections, contention sets and the Prioritization Draw will make headlines in 2027, but no 2026-round extension is expected to launch before 2028.
Risks to Watch in 2027
- Higher holding costs: the .COM wholesale increase on November 1, 2026 applies to every .COM renewal in 2027.
- Churn in fast-growing extensions: low renewal rates can mean large numbers of dropped names. This could be a great opportunity for investors to find valuable dropped names in expired auctions.
- Policy changes: the "SI" term depends on one administration's choice, and registry rules can change.
- Incomplete data: no single source sees every sale, so public sales lists and marketplace reports each show only part of the market.
What Should Domain Investors Be Aware Of?
- Review your portfolio: short, hyphen-free names carried the highest prices in 2026. It's a good time to check which names are worth their renewal fee.
- Check renewal rates alongside growth: an extension that grows quickly but renews below 20% may lose many names the next year.
- Plan for .SI renewals: if you hold .SI names, most come up for renewal in fall 2027.
- Watch expiring names: more 2026 registrations reaching their first renewal could mean more choice in expired auctions.
- Mark the key dates: String Confirmation Day (November 17), the .WEB launch, the objection deadline (March 16, 2027) and Verisign's Q4 results in early 2027.
- Learn from other investors: NamePros members often share their own journeys, such as this thread where an investor is sharing their sales from 2025 and 2026. Threads like this are a good place to pick up practical tips.
To find names or list your own, browse the Dynadot marketplace, and explore more guides in our domain investing hub.
FAQ
Is domain investing still worth it in 2026?
It can be, with realistic expectations. Registrations reached a record 411.6 million in 2026, and aftermarket activity on Dynadot grew. Most names never sell, though, and renewal fees add up every year, so it helps to set a budget and focus on quality names.
Which TLDs are growing the fastest?
Among the largest extensions, .XYZ grew fastest in the year to September 2026, at about 73%, followed by .TOP, .SHOP, .INFO and .ONLINE. Many low-cost extensions have renewal rates under 20%, so fast growth doesn't always last.
Are .SI domains a good investment?
.SI domains have attracted strong interest in 2026, but they carry risk. Registrations jumped from 3,515 in August to 46,066 in September 2026. Renewals in fall 2027 will show how much of that demand lasts.
When can I register the new 2026 gTLDs like .AGENT?
Not yet. ICANN's objection period for the 2026 round runs until March 16, 2027, and the first new extensions are estimated to launch around Q2 2028.
What should beginners buy in 2026?
Start with short, clear .COM names and set a renewal budget before you buy. Expired auctions can be a good place to look, since those names have been registered before and some already have a history.