.van
Is .van a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.van is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is XYZ Registry.
Short and memorable, but vans, vanlife and Vancouver shorthand are thin niches; few projects would make it their main address.
van dealers, rental and camper-conversion businesses, vanlife creators, and people using "Van" as a Vancouver or Dutch-surname shorthand
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 .van: a short, generic vehicle-type noun that is really a trade identity, sold to the operators and hire/rental firms whose whole business is that one vehicle class, not to the whole motoring market.
Another single-vehicle-category noun one notch below .car/.auto, betting that a specific body type has enough dealers, hire outfits and conversion/lifestyle businesses to carry a registry on its own.
Also a vehicle sub-category noun aimed at dealers, rental and enthusiast sellers, but it is a plural retail-browse word with a consumer-hobby buyer, where .van leans commercial/working-vehicle, so the buyer profile only partly overlaps.
What a .van domain is
.van is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, in our Commerce category. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .van domain extension real yet?
.van 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 .van domain?
You can’t yet. A .van 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 .van was .limo, delegated on 17 December 2013.
Is .van a real TLD?
Not yet. .van is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .van 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 a real dictionary word with several readings — the vehicle, the vanlife camper subculture, a common shorthand for Vancouver, the Turkish city of Van, and the Dutch surname particle — but each is a small or fragmented group, and none has an obvious reason to put its primary identity on a three-letter vehicle word rather than a conventional TLD. By analogy (flagged as analogy): vehicle-themed strings from the previous round such as .car, .cars and .auto drew limited genuine primary-identity use despite short, clean strings, and vanlife brands tend to live on social handles and conventional domains. It is not in the 30-49 band because there is no visible volume or price driver tied to the meaning itself; registrations at scale would depend on the operator's distribution and promotions rather than on demand for the word, and the brand signal is weak outside the small van-trade niche. It is not in the 1-9 band because the word is short, pronounceable, and carries real meanings in several markets, so some vanity, dealer and hobbyist demand is realistic over the next 5 years. The recorded applicant is XYZ.COM LLC, a standard application (not geographic), so no Vancouver city endorsement or geo positioning is on the record. Main market uncertainty: whether the Vancouver-shorthand reading catches on locally as an informal city namespace, which would give the string a geographic anchor its vehicle meaning lacks.