After more than ten years, one of the opportunities in the world of the Internet has reopened: the possibility to apply new top level domains (gTLD, Generic Top Level Domain), custom designed for your company, brand, community or territory.
This is confirmed by the Department of Digital Transformation The Presidency of the Council of Ministers, which published in the last few days the position document of the Italian Committee of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to support those who wish to participate in the New gTLD Register: 2026 Roundthe initiative promoted by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the international body that coordinates the domain name system (DNS).
Applications remain open until August 12, 2026: there is still not much time for those who want to seize the opportunity to evaluate possibility and needs.
You can read the official news on the Government website: New internet top-level domains in 2026: applications open for ICANN Round
What is the 2026 ICANN Round and why is it a rare event
The program to assign new top-level domains is not entirely new: the last round dates back to 2012. Since then there has been no window of this kind in the world of domains, and it is this rarity that makes the opportunity interesting for those who work digitally.
The initiative is open to public administrations, local authorities, institutions, businesses, associations and other legal entities interested in improving their digital identity through a new internet extension. Applications may relate to different types of gTLDs:
- generic domainslinked to sectors or product categories;
- branded domains (brand TLDs)relating to registered trademarks;
- community domainsdedicated to specific categories of users or interests;
- geographic domainsreferring to cities, regions or territories;
- internationalized domains (IDN)which allows alphabets other than the Latin alphabet to be used.
The ICANN registry opened in 2012 received 1,930 applications, resulting in the delegation of more than 1,200 TLDs in the root DNS starting from 2013. These extensions cover generic strings (e.g. .app, .blog, .shop), geographic (es. .london, .paris, .berlin) e brand TLD (es. .google, .apple, .bmw, .amazon).
New high-level domains: also an opportunity for Made in Italy
For Italian territories, defense consortia, trade associations and Made in Italy supply chains, a personalized top-level domain can be an important opportunity to strengthen identity.
1. A unique and identifiable digital identity. A PDO consortium could have its own extension, a wine or oil district, an internationally known domain (model .paris or .barcelona) instead of simple subdomains. So the origin and authenticity of the product or place can be instantly recognized online.
2. Direct control over “who can use it”. The person who gets the TLD registers it: they decide who can register addresses under that extension. For a protected consortium, this is huge: it means being able to grant domains only to authorized producers, which would reduce the risk of sites exploiting a protected nomenclature being unduly removed.
3. One “mirror” for services, tourism and communication. Institutional sites, producer e-commerce, tourism promotion initiatives and international communication can be brought together under one extension.
Protections for geographical and institutional names
One of the most sensitive aspects of the program concerns i geographic domainsfor which specific protection measures are proposed: letters of support or non-opposition from the competent authorities, as well as the possibility of activating mechanisms to report critical issues (such as theEarly Warning( ) starting from the word called “Reveal Day“, estimated approx mid October 2026when will ICANN publish accepted applications.
The IGF Italia Committee, established by the Department of Digital Transformation with the participation of the Agency for Digital Italy (AgID), has made itself available to play the role of institutional liaison and technical support for administrations, companies and interested parties, to also monitor any inappropriate use of public interest names.
What you need to implement
It must be stated clearly: participating in the New gTLD Register is not the same as registering a traditional domain. It is a structured path, that requires technical, economic, legal, operational and governance assessmentsas well as the preparation of documents required by the ICANN Applicant Guidebook (AGB). In the case of geographic extensions, as mentioned, additional permissions are added.
For that reason, anyone evaluating an application – be it a company, consortium or local authority – should move quickly, assuming the window closes. on August 12, 2026 and, as the experience of 2012 shows, it may take more than ten years for the next opportunity to materialize.
Why talk about it even for those who manage “traditional” domains
If owning your own TLD has always been an operation for companies with international budgets and objectives, this news is still a good reminder for everyone how strategic the way you choose and manage your online identity is. Whether it’s a .it extension, .com or more vertical, choosing the right domain name is still one of the first steps in building a solid, recognizable and defensible digital presence.
On Shellrent you can register and manage your domain, protect it and support it with hosting, professional emails and SSL certificates: the basic tools to build a reliable digital identity.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
