01
The base grew 8.1% in a year
The Domain Name Industry Brief counted 401.6 million registrations across all top-level domains at the end of Q2 2026. That was 29.9 million more names than one year earlier and 9.1 million more than the prior quarter.
The total is a stock, not a count of active organizations or websites. It includes redirects, parked names, defensive registrations, infrastructure names, speculative inventory, and many other uses.
02
.com and country codes still anchor the map
The .com base stood at 166.6 million names. Country-code top-level domains collectively reached 148.6 million. Together they show two durable forms of naming: the globally familiar legacy extension and the locally meaningful country identity.
Comparisons across categories require care. Registry policy, renewal price, reporting cadence, local eligibility, and promotional activity can all change observed registration totals.
03
New gTLDs supplied the fastest percentage growth
New generic top-level domains reached 52.9 million registrations, up 34.0% year over year. That acceleration is significant, but the category’s most recent combined renewal estimate was far below the mature legacy namespaces reported in the same brief.
Creates can be driven by launches, promotions, low first-year prices, portfolio strategies, and new demand. Renewals ask a different question: whether the registrant keeps paying after the first decision.
04
Measure movement, then ask why
Quarterly growth is a useful pulse, not an explanation. DomainSense pairs the series with source notes and downloadable data so readers can distinguish registry counts from adoption, resolution, usage, and trust.
The next layer of analysis should follow renewal behavior, DNS activity, security configuration, and concentration across providers—not just the number of names created.
SOURCES