ICANN

The history of ICANN traces back to the formation of the Internet itself: in 1969, the first message was sent over the U.S. Department of Defense’s Arpanet network; three years later, Jon Postel began recording socket numbers for the Arpanet in his notebook, a registry that eventually became the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which coordinates the Domain Name System. Postel was then a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and under the Arpanet development contract he maintained a list of host names and addresses as well as a list of RFC documents.⁠[1][1][2]

On July 1, 1997, as part of the Clinton Administration’s Framework for Global Electronic Commerce, the President directed the Secretary of Commerce to privatize the Domain Name System in a manner that increases competition and facilitates international participation. On July 2, the Department of Commerce requested public comment on DNS administration and received more than 430 comments amounting to some 1,500 pages; on January 30, 1998, the department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued “A Proposal to Improve the Technical Management of Internet Names and Addresses” (the “Green Paper”), which proposed that the private sector create a new not-for-profit corporation managed by a globally and functionally representative board of directors, and by the close of the comment period on March 23 it had received more than 650 comments.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2]

On June 5, 1998, NTIA issued its “Statement of Policy on the Management of Internet Names and Addresses,” known as the “White Paper.” The policy document responded to concerns about the new corporation being based in the United States, arguing that incorporation in the United States would not remove it from the jurisdiction of other nations and that the new corporation had to be headquartered somewhere. At the time, registration and propagation of key gTLDs such as .com, .net, and .org were performed by Network Solutions (NSI) under a five-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) that was due to expire on September 30, 1998, and NSI also operated the “A” root server holding the authoritative root database.⁠[2][2][2][2]

ICANN was founded in 1998, growing out of a U.S. Government commitment to transfer the policy and technical management of the DNS to a non-profit corporation based in the United States with global participation. Under its articles of incorporation as revised on November 21, 1998, ICANN is a nonprofit public benefit corporation organized under the California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation Law and not for the private gain of any person; its purposes are coordinating the assignment of Internet technical parameters, coordinating the IP address space, coordinating the Domain Name System (including developing policies on when new top-level domains are added to the DNS root system), and overseeing the operation of the authoritative root server system.⁠[1][3][3][3][3]

ICANN then signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Commerce under which the two parties would jointly carry out a “DNS Project” to design, develop, and test the mechanisms, methods, and procedures needed to transition DNS management functions performed by or on behalf of the U.S. Government to a private-sector not-for-profit entity, covering IP address block allocation policy, oversight of root server system operations, oversight of new top-level domain policy, and coordination of other technical parameters. In its early years, Esther Dyson served as ICANN’s board chair (1998–2000) and Mike Roberts as its CEO (1998–2001).⁠[4][4][4][5][5]

In 1999, ICANN held its first public meeting in Singapore, and it later established offices in Brussels, Istanbul, Montevideo, and Singapore.⁠[6]

The original version of ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) took effect on October 24, 1999, and all registrars must follow it. Under the policy, most trademark-based domain name disputes must be resolved by agreement, court action, or arbitration before a registrar will cancel, suspend, or transfer a domain name; disputes alleged to arise from abusive registrations (such as cybersquatting) can be brought by the trademark holder to an approved dispute-resolution service provider in expedited administrative proceedings. On February 21, 2024, the policy was updated to implement the Registration Data Policy, and contracted parties had to implement the new version by August 21, 2025.⁠[7][7][7][7][7]

Seven original gTLDs (.com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org) were created in the 1980s. After years of discussion, ICANN selected seven new top-level domains in November 2000 and introduced them in 2001 and 2002: .biz, .info, .name, and .pro were unsponsored, while .aero, .coop, and .museum were sponsored. In 2003, ICANN launched another process that introduced six sponsored top-level domains: .asia, .cat, .jobs, .mobi, .tel, and .travel. A sponsored top-level domain has a sponsor representing a specific community that carries out delegated policy-formulation responsibilities.⁠[8][8][8][8]

In 2005, building on the trial rounds of 2000 and 2003, ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) began a policy development process on introducing new gTLDs, which lasted two years and involved extensive consultation with governments, civil society, business, intellectual property stakeholders, and technologists. In 2008, the ICANN Board adopted 19 specific GNSO policy recommendations, one of which provided that new gTLDs should be introduced in rounds until the scale of demand was clear. ICANN then carried out implementation work addressing concerns such as the protection of intellectual property and community interests, consumer protection, and DNS stability, with multiple public consultations on draft versions of the Applicant Guidebook; in June 2011, the Board approved the Applicant Guidebook and authorized the launch of the New gTLD Program.⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9]

On September 30, 2009, the U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN signed the Affirmation of Commitments, recognizing the conclusion of their earlier Joint Project Agreement and institutionalizing the global coordination of the DNS by a private sector led organization. In it, ICANN committed to maintain the capacity to coordinate the DNS at the overall level and to work for a single, interoperable Internet, to remain a not-for-profit corporation headquartered in the United States with offices around the world, and to operate as a multi-stakeholder, private sector led organization with input from the public. The signatories were NTIA’s Lawrence E. Strickling and ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom.⁠[10][10][10][10][10]

The application window for the first round of the New gTLD Program opened on January 12, 2012, and closed in April of that year; ICANN received 1,930 applications covering roughly 1,400 unique strings, including 84 community applications, 66 geographic name applications, and 116 Internationalized Domain Name applications. On December 17, 2012, ICANN held a prioritization draw to set the processing order, with independent third-party evaluators reviewing applications by priority number, and on March 22, 2013, it released the first set of Initial Evaluation results.⁠[9][9][11][11][9][9]

In October 2013, the first new gTLDs were delegated into the Internet’s root zone. As of August 31, 2026, of the 1,930 applications in the 2012 round, 1,241 gTLDs had been delegated, 653 applications had been withdrawn, and 32 would not proceed, were not approved, or were terminated; 16 of the 234 contention sets had been resolved through ICANN auctions.⁠[9][11][11][11]

On March 14, 2014, NTIA announced its intent to transition stewardship of key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community and asked ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a transition proposal. NTIA at the time contracted with ICANN to perform the IANA functions and had a cooperative agreement with Verisign to perform related root zone management functions; it said that transitioning out of this role marked the final phase of the DNS privatization outlined by the U.S. Government in 1997.⁠[12][12][12][12][12]

NTIA required the proposal to have broad community support and to address four principles: support and enhance the multistakeholder model; maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS; meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and maintain the openness of the Internet. NTIA stated that it would not accept a proposal replacing its role with a government-led or intergovernmental solution; the IANA functions contract then in force was due to expire on September 30, 2015.⁠[12][12][12][12]

On October 1, 2016, the contract between ICANN and NTIA to perform the IANA functions officially expired, transitioning the coordination and management of the Internet’s unique identifiers to the private sector. The proposals developed by the global community both replaced NTIA’s historic stewardship role and enhanced ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, including giving the community direct recourse if it disagrees with decisions of the ICANN organization or Board. ICANN Board Chair Stephen D. Crocker said the transition had been envisioned 18 years earlier and was made a reality by the tireless work of the global Internet community. For Internet users, there was no change in their online experience.⁠[13][13][13][13][13][13][13]

As part of the accompanying accountability reforms, the ICANN Bylaws established the Empowered Community, which gives the community specific powers to hold the Board and organization accountable, including powers related to budgets, Bylaws changes, and Board directors. The IANA functions cover the DNS, Internet Protocol address resources, and protocol parameters used by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and as of October 2026 they were performed by Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), a purpose-built affiliate of ICANN.⁠[14][14][15]

In 2018, ICANN completed the first rollover of the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) root zone key signing key (KSK). ICANN said this was the result of years of preparation and coordination with the global technical community, allowing a critical element of the DNS to be changed while maintaining secure and stable operation; periodic root zone KSK rollovers have since become an established part of DNSSEC operations.⁠[14][14][16]

On May 17, 2018, the ICANN Board approved the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data, establishing temporary requirements under which ICANN and its contracted parties would continue to meet WHOIS-related contractual and community policy obligations while complying with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), whose enforcement began on May 25. The temporary specification replaced only certain provisions of the registry agreements, registrar accreditation agreements, and related policies and applied to processing personal data linked to the European Economic Area; the Board resolution also initiated a community-led policy development process toward a permanent consensus policy.⁠[17][17][17][17][17][17]

On November 13, 2019, Public Interest Registry (PIR), which had operated .ORG and six other gTLDs as a not-for-profit organization since 2003, announced that its parent organization, the Internet Society (ISOC), had agreed to sell PIR and all of its assets to Ethos Capital, with PIR also to be converted from a Pennsylvania not-for-profit corporation into a for-profit limited liability company; on November 14, PIR submitted a notice of change of control and entity conversion to ICANN under its registry agreements, and ICANN had to decide whether to consent by May 4, 2020.⁠[18][18][18][18][18]

ICANN issued three requests for more information and reviewed hundreds of pages of documentation from PIR, ISOC, and Ethos Capital, more than 30 stakeholder letters, and input from a public forum at ICANN67. On April 30, 2020, the Board decided to reject the change of control and entity conversion request, finding that withholding consent to the transfer of PIR from ISOC to Ethos Capital was reasonable and the right thing to do.⁠[18][18][18][18]

On June 10, 2024, the ICANN Board selected Kurt Erik “Kurtis” Lindqvist as the next President and CEO, effective December 5, 2024, with Sally Costerton continuing as interim President and CEO until then. Lindqvist had served as CEO of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) since 2019, had previously been CEO of Netnod, and had served on the Internet Architecture Board and as a working group chair in RIPE and the IETF.⁠[19][19][19][19][19]

In November 2025, at the ICANN84 Annual General Meeting in Dublin, the ICANN Board adopted the Applicant Guidebook for the 2026 round of the New gTLD Program. The guidebook sets out the requirements and processes for all entities applying for gTLDs and is based on more than 300 outputs from community consensus policy recommendations, after more than 250 hours of Implementation Review Team meetings and five Public Comment proceedings; as stipulated by the community, it had to be made available at least four months before the application window opened, and the Board directed the ICANN organization to publish it no later than December 30, 2025. Board Chair Tripti Sinha called it a significant milestone on the path to opening the application window.⁠[20][20][20][20][20][20]

On March 12, 2026, the ICANN Board approved the 2026 Base Registry Agreement, the standard contract that successful 2026 round applicants must sign with ICANN, defining a registry operator’s rights, obligations, and technical and operational standards for running a top-level domain; the text was the product of multiple discussions with the Implementation Review Team and four Public Comment proceedings.⁠[21][21][21]

On April 30, 2026, ICANN announced that the application window for the 2026 round of the New gTLD Program was open, the first opportunity in over a decade for businesses, communities, governments, and other organizations to apply to operate new generic top-level domains; the 2012 round had introduced more than 1,200 new gTLDs, including brand domains such as .microsoft and .sky, geographic domains such as .africa and .berlin, and generic terms such as .bank and .eco. The round accepts gTLD applications in 27 scripts, applications must be submitted online through the TLD Application Management System (TAMS), and all applicants are required to use evaluated registry service providers.⁠[22][22][22][22][22][23]

On May 3, 2026, the ICANN Board adopted the Fiscal Year 2027–2031 Operating and Financial Plan, the FY27 Operating Plan and Budget, and the IANA FY27 Operating Plan and Budget. Fiscal year 2027 runs from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027; under the Bylaws, the Empowered Community may consider whether to reject plans adopted by the Board, and absent a pending rejection process the plans would take effect on July 1, 2026.⁠[24][24][24][24]

ICANN Board member Alan Barrett died on May 28, 2026. He had been appointed to the ICANN Board by the Address Supporting Organization in 2021 and again in 2024, had served as CEO of AFRINIC, the Regional Internet Registry for Africa, from 2015 to 2019, and at the time of his death was Co-Chair of the Board Caucus for the 2026 round of the New gTLD Program.⁠[25][25][25][25]

The 15-week application submission period for the 2026 round closed at 23:59 UTC on August 12, 2026, with most applications submitted in the final days. At the close of the window, ICANN had received more than 1,600 primary applications, more than 1,100 of which also included applications for replacement strings; the final number could not be confirmed until the gTLD evaluation fee was paid. On September 22, ICANN confirmed that 1,663 applications had been submitted, of which 1,616 had been paid for and would proceed in the round, and cautioned that while some potential applicants had publicly disclosed the strings they applied for, only ICANN’s published information was complete and verified.⁠[26][26][26][26][27][27][27]

On October 1, 2026, ICANN marked the tenth anniversary of the IANA stewardship transition. It noted that the IANA functions had continued to operate securely and stably over the decade, and that for Internationalized Domain Names, more than 270 script community volunteers from 44 countries had contributed over nine years of work enabling 26 scripts in the DNS. ICANN also noted that in December 2025, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 20-year review reaffirmed the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance and recognized the role of the technical community.⁠[14][14][14][14]

On Reveal Day, October 7, 2026, at 18:00 UTC, ICANN published the list of applications received in the 2026 round on its Application Publication and Statistics website, including applied-for primary strings and any variant or replacement strings, a list of contention sets, and the public portions of each application. Based on primary string data as of that day, the round had 1,615 applications, including 333 brand applications, 16 community applications, 15 self-identified geographic name applications, 51 applications from Applicant Support Program applicants, 21 Internationalized Domain Name applications, and 9 variant applications; by region, 864 came from North America, 506 from Europe, 218 from Asia/Australia/Pacific, 16 from Africa, and 11 from Latin America and the Caribbean. The final number and types are to be confirmed on String Confirmation Day. ICANN President and CEO Kurtis Lindqvist said Reveal Day marked an important milestone for the next expansion of the Domain Name System.⁠[28][29][29][29][29][29][29]

In the contention set list published the same day, 13 applications for .agent formed a single contention set, filed by Charleston Road Registry Inc., ECHO Domain Co L.L.C., Elegant Leader Limited, FireLabs Capital Ltd, Intercap Registry Inc., Internet Land & Cattle LLC, Ipollo Tech Ltd, Meta Registry Holdings LLC, Open Agent Registry, Inc., OPENAI OPCO, LLC, Radix Technologies Inc SEZC, Rein Check, LLC, and XYZ.COM LLC; two further applications, from Link Freedom Group Ltd and Radix Technologies Inc SEZC, formed the .agentic contention set.⁠[30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30][30]

Under ICANN’s published schedule, October 8–21, 2026, is the replacement period, during which applicants that submitted an alternate “replacement” string may switch to it; November 17 is String Confirmation Day, when the final list of applied-for strings and updated contention sets will be published and the Community Input and Objections Period, running to March 16, 2027, begins, and applicants that withdraw by 23:59 UTC on November 27 can receive a 65 percent refund of the evaluation fee; the String Evaluation Stage is expected to last 180 days, and the prioritization draw that sets the subsequent processing order will be held in the first half of 2027.⁠[29][29][29][29][29][29]

On October 15, 2026, ICANN announced that the scheduled rollover of the root zone key signing key had been completed on October 11. The root zone KSK is the trust anchor of DNSSEC, enabling DNS resolvers to verify that responses have not been modified in transit. ICANN said it was aware of reports of issues affecting a limited number of systems after the transition and was assessing their relationship to the rollover; further operational milestones remain, including the scheduled revocation of the previous KSK in January 2027.⁠[16][16][16][16]

On October 14, 2026, ICANN published its audited consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2026, which ended June 30, 2026, along with the audited financial statements of its affiliate PTI for the same period; the independent audit firm Baker Tilly US, LLP issued an unmodified opinion. In FY26, ICANN’s funding rose in line with domain name registrations, and operating expenses increased as planned in the budget but remained within it; full-time staff grew from 449 at the start of the year to 454 at the end; Funds Under Management, including all cash and investments, totaled $542 million at year-end, up $7 million from the start of the year, driven mainly by investment gains and operating surplus and partially offset by New gTLD Program expenses and Grants Program disbursements.⁠[31][31][31][31][31][31][31]

In October 2026, in response to a newly disclosed PHP vulnerability affecting the underlying software of many websites, ICANN took three PHP-based sites offline as a precaution, namely the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) site and the websites of the 2026 and 2012 rounds of the New gTLD Program, saying there was no indication that its systems had been negatively affected and that the Application Publication and Statistics (APS) website and the TLD Application Management System (TAMS), which are not based on PHP, remained available. ICANN later updated that it had applied and tested the patch released by the PHP Foundation and that the three sites were available again.⁠[32][32][32][32]

ICANN coordinates the Internet’s unique identifiers worldwide: it contracts with the registry for each top-level domain and runs an accreditation system for the registrars that sell domain names; for IP addresses, it does not run the system directly but serves as the central repository, supplying address ranges to regional Internet registries, which in turn distribute them to network providers; root server operators remain largely autonomous but work with ICANN to keep the system up to date. ICANN does not control content on the Internet, nor does it deal with spam or Internet access.⁠[33][33][33][33][33]

ICANN is made up of several groups representing different interests: three supporting organizations represent organizations dealing with IP addresses, organizations dealing with domain names, and managers of country code top-level domains; four advisory committees represent governments and international treaty organizations, root server operators, those concerned with Internet security, and ordinary Internet users; and a Technical Liaison Group works with the organizations that devise basic Internet protocols. Final decisions are made by the Board of Directors, which has 20 members, 16 voting directors and four non-voting liaisons; eight of the voting directors are chosen by an independent Nominating Committee and the rest are nominated by supporting organizations, and the President and CEO is also a Board member.⁠[33][33][33][33][33]

Past leaders listed by the ICANN History Project include board chairs Esther Dyson (1998–2000), Vint Cerf (2000–2007), Peter Dengate-Thrush (2007–2011), and Steve Crocker (2011–2017), and CEOs Mike Roberts (1998–2001), Stuart Lynn (2001–2003), Paul Twomey (2003–2009), and Fadi Chehadé (2012–2016). Rod Beckstrom was President and CEO when the Affirmation of Commitments was signed in 2009, and Göran Marby held the post in 2018; Maarten Botterman was Board Chair from 2019 to 2022; as of May 2026, the Board Chair was Tripti Sinha; Kurtis Lindqvist has been President and CEO since December 2024.⁠[5][34][34][34][5][35][34][34][10][17][18][25][19]

ICANN: Official website: https://www.icann.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[36]

IANA: Official website: https://www.iana.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

New gTLD Program: Official website: https://newgtldprogram.icann.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]

X: Public account: https://x.com/icann (opens in a new window)⁠[37]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/icann (opens in a new window)⁠[37]

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