.tex
Is .tex a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.tex is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is XYZ Registry. Aruba named .tex as a backup string for its .hola application. ICANN deactivated it, because another applicant applied for the same string or named it as a backup.
A niche TLD for texas-identified businesses and personal brands wanting a "Tex" shorthand, plus TeX/LaTeX tool makers and textile or technical-fabric companies looking for a short, on-theme address.
Texas-identified businesses and personal brands wanting a "Tex" shorthand, plus TeX/LaTeX tool makers and textile or technical-fabric companies looking for a short, on-theme address.
Aruba S.p.A. told Domain Name Wire it applied for 39 strings in the 2026 round 'as primary or replacement', listing .tex 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 the most likely reading of .tex: take a trade's own clipped shorthand for its category (moto for motorcycling, tex for textiles) and sell it as the vertical's namespace, which only works if the abbreviation is legible to buyers and customers without expansion.
A truncated generic category noun aimed at an entire manufacturing/retail vertical rather than at any one company, betting that the short form reads as the industry itself and beats the longer literal alternatives on memorability.
Parallel only under the competing reading of .tex as a place shorthand (Texas): a three-letter abbreviation that a single geographic constituency must claim and endorse before anyone else's identity can sit on it, which is a different bet from the industry-shorthand one and is included to cover the string's ambiguity.
What a .tex domain is
.tex 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 .tex domain extension real yet?
.tex 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 .tex domain?
You can’t yet. A .tex 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 .tex was .moto, delegated on 12 November 2016.
Is .tex a real TLD?
Not yet. .tex is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .tex is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- Aruba · now deactivated backupICANN
- Aruba · now abandonedICANN
- XYZ Registry · first recordedICANN
- Aruba · first recordedDomain Name Wire (Andrew Allemann), quoting Aruba S.p.A.
“APEC2611T-T53245 · Aruba PEC S.P.A. · replacement string of .hola · Deactivated XL2625T-T76885 · XYZ.COM LLC · primary”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: 30-49 (usable but limited), at its lower edge. The string carries three distinct associations — an informal shorthand for Texas, the TeX/LaTeX typesetting ecosystem (where .tex is also a file extension), and textiles/technical fabrics — and each is real but small, so registrations plausibly happen at volume only on price or as regional vanity, with a weak brand signal and a thin aftermarket. It is not in the 50-69 band because no one of these communities is large or commercially dense enough to make .tex a primary identity that sells itself; by analogy (flagged as analogy), short abbreviation-style new gTLDs without a dominant meaning have tended to see low-volume, price-driven uptake rather than sustained primary-identity use, whereas category words like .tech gained standing because the word itself carried an unambiguous, commercially valuable meaning. It is not in the 10-29 band because the Texas-shorthand use is a genuine regional identity hook (again by analogy to how informal geo-nicknames get used in local business branding), and TeX and textile users have plausible serious, if narrow, primary-identity reasons to register. Main market uncertainty: whether Texas businesses actually adopt "tex" as an address suffix versus treating it as a novelty — a regional embrace would push the string well into the band, while indifference would leave it a typesetting-hobbyist and textile-trade niche. Registration counts, pricing, and applicant plans for this string are unknown from the record.