October 2026 brought new holder checks in Austria, a stricter rule for Qatar, the reveal of 1,615 applications for new generic top-level domains, a new ICANN policy for internationalized country domains and fresh figures for country codes. This round-up lists the changes that matter to holders of country-code domains, with their sources.
Which registry rules changed in October?
- .at, 1 October: Austria’s new network security act, which implements NIS2, took effect. nic.at now requires a phone number for every holder and checks holder data against public sources. A holder who does not correct wrong data within 21 days sees the domain put on hold, then revoked after 30 more days.
- .ee, 7 October: founders of Estonian companies can reserve their .ee names when they register in the Business Register.
- .qa, 22 October: Qatar’s registry planned to require a Qatari entity or trademark for new .qa names from this date.
What happened in the 2026 new gTLD round?
ICANN revealed 1,615 applications on 7 October, including 333 for .brand top-level domains, 21 for internationalized strings and 16 community applications. Applicants could switch to their replacement string until 21 October. On 23 October ICANN named three Independent Objectors, and on 26 October the provider that will check the consistency of evaluations. The objection period opens on 17 November 2026 and runs until 16 March 2027.
What came out of ICANN87 in Bali?
The meeting ran from 17 to 22 October. On its last day the ICANN Board adopted the ccNSO policy for selecting and retiring internationalized country-code domains, except its Risk Treatment Appraisal provisions. It replaces the IDN ccTLD Fast Track, and the domains validated under the Fast Track keep their status. The Governmental Advisory Committee published its Communiqué on 26 October, asking for safeguards in the new round and for registration data to be verified before a new domain can resolve.
What else changed in October?
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 8 October | Saudi Arabia joined the Madrid System for international trademarks, which now covers 133 countries |
| 11 October | ICANN completed the rollover of the root zone key signing key, the anchor of DNSSEC; the old key is due to be revoked in January 2027 |
| 16 October | LK Domain Registry welcomed Domgate as the first registrar on its EPP service for .lk |
| 19 October | .ee counted 206,984 domains at the end of September, 7,337 more than three months earlier |
| late October | the Domain Name Industry Brief counted 151.4 million country-code domains at the end of September, up 4.6% in a year |
Which price changes are coming?
Verisign raised the .com registry fee from $10.26 to $10.97 on 1 November 2026, and the .net fee rises from $10.91 to $12.00 on 1 March 2027. For holders of .at names, the urgent task is the holder data: wrong or missing data that is not corrected can lead to the domain being put on hold.
What should you do now?
- Check that the holders of your .at, .cz and other NIS2-affected domains have a valid phone number and correct data.
- If you plan to register .qa names, check whether you have a Qatari entity or trademark.
- Search the list of applied-for gTLDs for your brands before 17 November.
Domgate is a corporate ccTLD registrar for 1,300+ extensions. It follows registry changes for brand owners, law firms and registrars, and publishes them on its news page.
