.chi
Is .chi a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.chi is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is XYZ Registry.
Short and catchy as a Chicago nickname or wellness pun, but it is a vanity string: cheap volume, weak brand signal, thin resale.
chicago-area businesses and creators trading on the "Chi-Town" nickname, plus wellness, tai chi and martial-arts brands and Greek-letter organizations wanting a short pun domain
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet as .chi: a three-letter colloquial shorthand for a big city, sold to local businesses who want a short hometown identity, and living or dying on whether people accept the shorthand instead of the full city name (.barcelona then, .chicago now).
Also a bet that a city's informal nickname, not its official name, becomes the namespace local businesses put their primary identity on — closer in kind than any category or brand string, though the nickname there is the dominant everyday usage rather than one meaning among several.
The other half of .chi's bet: a short string with a few real but unofficial meanings, floated by a portfolio registry for cheap volume registrations, where no single community treats it as its default namespace so demand stays fragmented and the aftermarket thin.
What a .chi domain is
.chi is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Places category. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .chi domain extension real yet?
.chi is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .chi domain?
You can’t yet. A .chi name can only be registered once the string is delegated (added to the DNS root) and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .chi was .bcn, delegated on 8 July 2015.
Is .chi a real TLD?
Not yet. .chi is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .chi is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- XYZ Registry · first recordedICANN
- Band chosen: 30-49 (usable but limited). The string has several real but shallow meanings: an informal nickname for Chicago, the energy concept behind tai chi and qi-based wellness branding, and a Greek letter used by fraternities and sororities. Each is a genuine reason someone might register a name, so it clears the vanity/joke band (10-29): a Chicago restaurant or a tai chi studio could plausibly use a .chi address as a primary identity. It does not reach the strong-niche band (50-69) because no single community treats "chi" as its default namespace; a nickname is not an official city identity, and wellness and Greek-life buyers are fragmented and price-sensitive, so adoption would always need explaining and the aftermarket would stay thin. By analogy (flagged as analogy), official city TLDs such as .nyc built sustained primary-identity use with civic backing, whereas short, pun-style generic strings from large registry portfolios have tended to register at volume on promotional pricing with low renewal and little resale value; .chi sits closer to the latter unless it is deliberately positioned as a Chicago namespace. The applicant on the record is XYZ.COM LLC, status confirmed, with no contention recorded; a large portfolio operator makes broad registrar distribution likely but says nothing about local civic adoption. Main market uncertainty: whether Chicago-area demand actually coalesces around an unofficial nickname TLD, or whether the string stays a generic vanity pun with mostly speculative and promotional registrations. Within the band, 34 rather than higher reflects the fragmented, informal demand and the lack of any category where .chi would be the obvious choice.