.ciao
Is .ciao a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.ciao is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is Aruba.
A niche TLD for italian-flavored consumer brands, restaurants, tourism and fashion businesses marketing "Italian-ness" abroad, plus individuals and marketers wanting a playful, friendly greeting-style address for personal pages or campaigns.
italian-flavored consumer brands, restaurants, tourism and fashion businesses marketing "Italian-ness" abroad, plus individuals and marketers wanting a playful, friendly greeting-style address for personal pages or campaigns
Aruba S.p.A. told Domain Name Wire it applied for 39 strings in the 2026 round 'as primary or replacement', listing .ciao among them without saying which strings are primary. The claim is the applicant's own, post-filing, relayed by the publication. Founder ruling 2026-09-09: recorded as announced. First application for this string on the record.
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: a short, everyday Romance-language conversational word with no category meaning, sold as cultural-linguistic identity to people and brands wanting to signal they speak that language rather than to any industry.
Also a non-English vernacular word whose entire value is affective resonance inside one culture — it works only if the warmth of the word itself, not any commercial category it names, persuades people to put their identity on it.
A pure interjection rather than a category noun, betting that an expressive everyday utterance can carry a namespace on tone alone; it differs mainly in being culture-neutral where the target leans on one national identity.
What a .ciao domain is
.ciao is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .ciao domain extension real yet?
.ciao 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 .ciao domain?
You can’t yet. A .ciao 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 .ciao was .soy, delegated on 19 April 2014.
Is .ciao a real TLD?
Not yet. .ciao is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .ciao is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Aruba · now confirmedICANN
- Aruba · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
“Aruba S.p.A., which operates the .cloud top level domain, is expanding its domain portfolio. The company told Domain Name Wire that it applied for 39 top level domains in this year's new TLD round. That number includes replacement strings. [...] The company applied for the following strings as primary or replacement: aid, all, ask, beta, bit, bnb, cart, ciao, daily, demo, easy, fix, gaming, gen, genius, gym, happy, hello, hola, human, kit, lab, mars, max, moon, omg, pec, pop, rem, roma, sign, sito, super, tag, tex, vps, yes, zen, zzz”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
- Band chosen: 10-29 (vanity/narrow), at its top. "Ciao" is one of the most globally recognized Italian words and carries positive, friendly affect, so the string has more inherent brand warmth than an arbitrary keyword; by analogy (flagged as analogy), expressive-word TLDs from the 2012 round such as .lol, .wtf, .cool and .fun found registrations mainly through low-price registrar promotions and short campaign or personal use, with weak renewal-driven identity use and a thin aftermarket. It is not in the 30-49 band because, unlike those broader English expressives, .ciao's natural domestic market (Italy) already defaults strongly to its ccTLD (.it) for primary identities, and the greeting/farewell semantics do not describe a product or sector, so serious projects would still need to explain the choice; it is not in the 1-9 band because a universally understood, pronounceable, two-syllable word with clear cultural attachment (Italian food, hospitality, fashion, tourism) has a realistic pool of vanity, campaign and "Italian-ness" branding buyers. Aruba, per the facts block, operates .cloud and is an Italian web-presence company, which plausibly improves registrar distribution in Italy but is not evidence of end-user demand. Main market uncertainty: whether Italian-themed businesses outside Italy (restaurants, cafes, travel, fashion resellers) adopt .ciao as a genuine primary identity signaling Italian authenticity, which would push it into the low 30s, versus the more likely outcome of promo-driven registrations with high churn; registration counts, pricing and comparable TLD figures are unknown here.