.manga
Is .manga a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.manga is contested: 2 applications for it are on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. They are Kodansha and Oinkadot.
A fun label for manga fan sites and artists, but the industry's real players are likely to keep their existing addresses.
manga artists, scanlation-adjacent reader communities, fan sites, indie webcomic creators, and merch shops; secondarily anime/manga media outlets and conventions wanting a themed address.
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 globally-exported subculture's own genre name, owned by no single company, sold on the premise that the scene's creators, labels, publishers and fan sites will hang their primary identity on the culture word itself.
Same bet aimed at the same buyer — a Japanese fandom vernacular word monetized as an otaku/anime-manga identity namespace, where success depends on a passionate subculture self-identifying rather than on any industry needing the string.
Same bet one notch more mainstream: a bare medium-category noun with an entire creative industry (creators, publishers, distributors, fan sites) as the addressable base and no incumbent with a prior claim, though it lacks the subculture-loyalty premium manga trades on.
What a .manga domain is
.manga 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 .manga domain extension real yet?
.manga 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 .manga domain?
You can’t yet. A .manga 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 .manga was .hiphop, delegated on 15 May 2014.
Is .manga a real TLD?
Not yet. .manga is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .manga is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Kodansha · first recordedICANN
- Oinkadot · now confirmedICANN
- Oinkadot · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
“KL2611T-T91723 · Kodansha Ltd. · primary · contention set 2026-146 OI2692T-T77768 · Oinkadot Inc · primary · contention set 2026-146”ICANN
“A new partnership has applied for 25 top level domain names in this year's ICANN TLD expansion round.”Domain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann)
- I place .manga in the 30-49 band (usable but limited). Manga is a genuinely large global cultural category with a passionate audience, so registrations at volume are plausible: fan sites, reader communities, artist portfolios, and merch storefronts could plausibly adopt it, which keeps it above the 10-29 vanity band where demand is shallow and event-driven. But it falls short of the 50-69 strong-niche band because the category's serious commercial actors, Japanese publishers, licensed platforms, and established retailers, are conservative about primary identity and have entrenched .com/.jp addresses; by analogy, otaku-flavored TLDs like .moe drew hobbyist registrations but produced little primary-identity use by rights-holders and a thin aftermarket (analogy, exact figures unknown). A further drag, reasoned qualitatively: much high-traffic manga-keyword web activity is piracy-adjacent reader sites, which could give the namespace an association rights-holders avoid, capping brand credibility. The applicant context is neutral but relevant: both Oinkadot principals run consumer registrars, which plausibly improves retail distribution and hobbyist uptake relative to a TLD with no channel. My main market uncertainty is whether Japanese publishers and licensed platforms would embrace or shun the string, since their posture largely determines whether it becomes a legitimate category label or a fan-and-gray-market ghetto. Aftermarket value over 5 years looks thin outside a handful of generic keywords.