Domain Industry Report: January 2026

Global domain registrations reached 352,898,341 in January 2026, representing a 6.13% year-over-year increase.

Written with google/gemma-3-27b-it from primary registry data · 2026-07-24

This month in domains — the news

Everything an industry insider should have caught this month — M&A, earnings from listed registrars & hosters, leadership moves, ICANN & policy, pricing, security. Gathered from public sources; each headline links to its origin — please verify via the linked source.

• earningsTeam Internet Group Shares Down 50% YoY · 2026-01-26
  Team Internet Group shares are down 50% year-over-year, raising questions about the company's ability to reshape its business after a difficult year. — webhosting.today ↗
• policyICANN Publishes January 2026 gTLD Registry Audit Report · 2026-01-29
  ICANN published its January 2026 gTLD Registry Audit Report, revealing noncompliance with the Registry Agreement in nine of 21 audited registry operators, related to reserved names and Internationalized Domain Name table accuracy. Several operators have already begun remediation. — icann.org ↗
• earningsGodaddy lost ~40% of its valuation over the past year · 2026-01-17
  GoDaddy has experienced a ~40% decrease in its valuation over the past year. — webhosting.today ↗

Overview

As of January 2026, the total number of domain names registered across all tracked Top-Level Domains (TLDs) reached 352,898,341. This figure represents a year-over-year growth of 6.13%. The domain landscape is split between generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) and country-code TLDs (ccTLDs), accounting for 253,021,772 and 99,876,569 registrations respectively.

Fastest Growth & Biggest Movers

The fastest percentage growth among gTLDs was observed in .xyz, with a substantial increase of 96.4%. .top followed with 88.6% growth, while .qpon saw an increase of 8140.9%. However, percentage growth doesn’t always reflect overall volume. Looking at absolute gains, .com led with an increase of 5,225,566 registrations, followed by .xyz at 4,256,009 and .top at 3,032,060. .info added 1,410,658 registrations and .org added 549,080. .store saw an increase of 474,683.

Notable Declines

Several gTLDs experienced declines in registrations. .lol saw the largest percentage decrease, falling by 63.2%. .today registered a decrease of 48.1%, while .tokyo declined by 47.2%. In absolute terms, .lol lost 458,511 registrations, .us lost 280,725 and .today lost 278,901. .net experienced a decrease of 255,142 registrations, while .buzz lost 167,571 and .nl lost 109,187.

Registrar Landscape

The total registrations managed by tracked registrars amounted to 196,900,121. GoDaddy maintained the largest market share at 29.2%, managing 57,577,650 registrations, though they saw a decrease of 1.6% (-933,074 registrations). Namecheap demonstrated the strongest growth among major registrars, increasing by 12.8% (1,596,316 registrations) to reach 14,043,040 registrations. Tucows (Enom/OpenSRS/Ascio/Hover) experienced a notable decline of 9.5% (-1,232,248 registrations). Squarespace / Google holds a 5.4% share (10,627,403 registrations) and Newfold (Web.com/NetSol) holds 3.4% (6,693,084 registrations).

Market Activity

January 2026 saw 6,740,416 new domain creations, 11,542,407 renewals, and 6,324,453 deletions. There were 672,891 domain transfers. The resulting net increase in registrations was 415,963, indicating continued, though moderate, growth in the overall domain portfolio. A total of 1122 TLDs reported activity.

Country-Code Movers & New Arrivals

Among ccTLDs, .id showed the largest growth with 24.9%, followed by .pt at 8.3% and .ma at 8.1%. .us experienced a decline of 11.8%, while .nu saw a decrease of 4.9%. .nl registered a decrease of 1.8%. No new TLDs were reported this month. No milestones were reported.

By the numbers

Exact figures for January 2026, each linking to the registry file it came from.

Biggest TLDs

Fastest growing (gTLD, YoY %)

Biggest movers by volume (net domains YoY)

Fastest shrinking (gTLD, YoY %)

Country-code movers

Registrar families

Numbers are exact registry figures; each links to its source file. See the live data on All TLDs. ← All reports