.mad
Is .mad a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.mad is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is XYZ Registry.
A short, punchy word people will grab for jokes, slogans and name hacks, but few serious projects would make it their main address.
creative studios, fan projects and personal sites wanting a loud three-letter ending, plus domain hackers building on "mad" (nomad-style wordplay) and some Madrid-themed uses
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 exactly: a three-letter shorthand for a major European city, sold as the compact alternative to the city's full-name TLD, where the whole thesis rests on locals and local businesses already reading those letters as the city.
Identical buyer and identical job — the city's own geographic identity space for its residents, businesses and institutions — differing only in that it spells the city out instead of compressing it to the shortcode.
Also a city-abbreviation geo TLD whose value depends on an abbreviation being unambiguously the city in everyday use, but it leans on a globally recognised colloquial nickname rather than a code that mostly travels through airports and plates.
What a .mad domain is
.mad 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 .mad domain extension real yet?
.mad 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 .mad domain?
You can’t yet. A .mad 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 .mad was .bcn, delegated on 8 July 2015.
Is .mad a real TLD?
Not yet. .mad is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .mad 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: 10-29 (vanity/narrow). The string is an emotive English word with several readings (angry, crazy, enthusiastic, the Madrid airport-code shorthand, the magazine and the Cold-War acronym), which makes it memorable and good for slogans and word-hack domains but gives it no category where a serious project would adopt it as a primary identity without explanation. By analogy to other short emotive or exclamatory generic TLDs (.lol, .wtf, .fun, .cool), demand of this kind tends to arrive in bursts around promotional pricing and novelty, with thin renewal commitment and a shallow aftermarket; that is an inference from analogy, and no figures are available in the verified facts. It is not in the 30-49 band because registrations at volume would depend on price and novelty rather than on any buyer group that needs this ending, and the brand signal is playful rather than credible. It is not in the 1-9 band because a three-letter English word with wordplay potential and a possible Madrid-fan angle has a realistic, if small, market of hobby, creative and campaign sites. On the record there is one confirmed standard application from XYZ.COM LLC (ICANN application ID XL2625T-T22206) with a contention count of 1; the record also lists a deactivated .development application naming .mad as primary, which does not change the market read. The main market uncertainty is whether a creative-community or Madrid-local hook forms around the word and sustains renewals, or whether it stays a promotion-driven novelty ending over the next 5 years.