.hola
Is .hola a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.hola is contested: 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are Identity Digital and Aruba.
A weak TLD for most names for spanish-speaking individuals, creators, and small brands wanting a playful or welcoming address, plus a few companies using it for greeting-style campaign or landing pages.
spanish-speaking individuals, creators, and small brands wanting a playful or welcoming address, plus a few companies using it for greeting-style campaign or landing pages
Aruba S.p.A. told Domain Name Wire it applied for 39 strings in the 2026 round 'as primary or replacement', listing .hola 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 as .hola: an everyday Spanish exclamation rather than a category noun, sold on warmth and cultural recognition to anyone addressing the Spanish-speaking world, so it only works if people will put identity on a feeling-word instead of a business descriptor.
Also a bare, ubiquitous Spanish word doing expressive/identity work ("I am") instead of naming an industry, betting that language affinity plus a short human phrase is enough to carry a namespace open to any registrant.
The same play one language over — a mass-market natural-language phrase whose entire value is emotional resonance with a huge non-English-speaking population, not a vertical or a brand — though a declaration of love is a narrower use-case hook than a general-purpose greeting.
What a .hola domain is
.hola is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Culture category. 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .hola domain extension real yet?
.hola 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 .hola domain?
You can’t yet. A .hola 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 .hola was .viva, delegated on 28 August 2015.
Is .hola a real TLD?
Not yet. .hola is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .hola is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Identity Digital · first recordedICANN
- Aruba · now confirmedICANN
- Aruba · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
“APEC2611T-T53245 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · primary · contention set 2026-109 FE2653T-T89703 · Femoral Express, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-109”ICANN
“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/joke/narrow). The string is an everyday Spanish greeting rather than a product, place, or industry, so it does not name a category anyone needs to be found under; by analogy with expressive-word TLDs from the 2012 round (.lol, .wtf, .omg-style strings and the greeting-word .hello), such namespaces attract curiosity and gift registrations, occasional marketing microsites, and shallow, event-driven demand rather than sustained primary-identity use, with thin aftermarkets. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no visible use case that would generate registrations at volume beyond novelty, and Spanish-language keyword TLDs from the 2012 round (analogy: .tienda, .futbol, .gratis, .uno) generally remained small in practice rather than becoming the default for Spanish-speaking businesses, who continue to favor .com and country codes. It is not in the 1-9 band because the Spanish-speaking internet is a very large, growing market, the word is universally recognized (including outside Spanish-speaking countries), and a low-priced, well-distributed launch by an operator that already runs a six-figure-registration TLD (.cloud, per the facts) could plausibly sustain a modest, real registration base. Main market uncertainty: whether a greeting-word TLD can be positioned as a personal or 'welcome page' namespace in Latin America and Spain strongly enough to move it from novelty to habit, or whether it stays a gift-and-lapse product; registrar shelf placement in Spanish-speaking markets would decide this. Specific registration counts for the analog TLDs are unknown to me within the rules here.