The .agent Domain and What to Register Today

As announced by ICANN on September 22, 2026, 1,616 applications for new top-level domains are going ahead in its 2026 round, and the strings applied for will be published on Reveal Day, October 7, 2026. Several groups have said they applied for .agent. This page covers what has been announced, when a .agent name could work, and what to register for an AI agent today, and will be rewritten against the published list after Reveal Day.

By Rodrigo Chame — independent creator with a digital marketing background. Published October 6, 2026.

What was applied for

ICANN's 2026 round took applications from 30 April to 12 August 2026. The full list stays sealed until Reveal Day, so the only strings known today are the ones applicants announced themselves. For .agent, three have spoken up: Unstoppable Domains and the Sentient Foundation announced their intent in December 2025; a builders' group, the Agent Community, says it is applying with support from companies such as Brave and Alibaba Cloud; and the registry Radix listed .agent among the 46 strings it applied for. More may appear on Reveal Day.

When a .agent name could work

Not soon. After Reveal Day comes evaluation, objections, contracting and delegation, which ICANN expects to take about a year and a half for a straightforward application. When several applicants want the same string they form a contention set, and that set has to be settled, often at auction, before anyone signs a contract. A contested .agent is unlikely to take registrations before 2028, and the winner then sets its own launch dates and prices.

A .agent you can buy today is not this one

If someone sells you a .agent name now, it is one of two things: a pre-order that cannot guarantee anything until a registry exists, or a blockchain name that most browsers do not open. Neither is the ICANN domain. Treat both as a bet, not as your agent's address.

What to register today

  • The .com or the .ai. Both work everywhere now. An AI agent's name is often a short coinage, so the exact .com is more often free than you expect.
  • The handles on the networks where your agent will post or be found, including the agent networks such as Moltbook.
  • A name that will still fit a .agent later. If .agent launches, you will want yourname.agent; a short, distinct name gives you the best chance of getting it at launch.

The AI agent name generator checks the .com and the .ai on company agent names, and the list of names assistants already use shows what to avoid.

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