ICANN's 2026 New gTLD Program, the first expansion of the generic top-level domain space since 2012, has drawn more than 1,600 applications for new domain extensions. Over the coming months and years, hundreds of new extensions will enter the market. For brand owners and their advisers, that means a much larger namespace to watch, more places where infringing registrations can appear, and a fresh set of decisions about where to register defensively and where to rely on enforcement instead.
This affects brands that did not apply
Most trade mark owners did not file their own gTLD application, and most never intended to. The programme still reaches them. Every new extension that launches is a new space in which a third party can register a domain that matches or imitates a brand. Monitoring budgets that were set for the current namespace will not stretch across hundreds of new ones without a change in approach, and enforcement teams will need to decide in advance which extensions matter enough to act on and which can be left alone.
Objections and the string landscape
The publication of the applied-for strings opens a window for objections. Trade mark owners, competing applicants and others with standing can object to applications on grounds that include legal rights, so the first task is to review the revealed strings against your own portfolio and your clients' portfolios. Beyond individual conflicts, the mix of applied-for strings also signals where the market is heading: which industries, geographies and brand categories are about to get their own extensions, and therefore where monitoring will need to focus.
Rights protection mechanisms
Each new extension will offer rights protection mechanisms before and after it opens to the public. Deciding now which brands to protect through those mechanisms, and in which extensions, avoids a rushed decision when launch dates start arriving close together. Where defensive registration is not justified, the established dispute procedures remain available: the UDRP and the Uniform Rapid Suspension system are expected to remain among the most effective and economical tools for dealing with abusive registrations in the new extensions, as they have been in the existing ones.
What to do in your portfolio
A sensible starting point is to make sure that domain names are recorded alongside the trade marks they relate to, so that a brand's protection can be reviewed as a whole rather than mark by mark. Keeping domain names in the same portfolio system as the marks they protect makes it much easier to see at a glance where a brand is covered and where it is exposed when the new extensions begin to launch.
Join the discussion
Our colleagues at Alt Legal are hosting a free webinar on this subject, Imminent Domains: Opportunities and Challenges for Trademark Owners After ICANN Reveals the New gTLD Applications, on Thursday 12 November 2026 at 11:00 ET (16:00 GMT). The speakers are Matt Serlin, Senior Director of Domain Management at Abion, and Doug Isenberg, founder of The GigaLaw Firm and a UDRP panelist for all five ICANN-approved dispute resolution providers. They will cover objections, the string landscape, monitoring and enforcement in an expanded namespace, rights protection mechanisms and how domain abuse is likely to evolve. A recording is sent to everyone who registers.