New gTLDs Grew 30% in 2025 as ICANN Prepares to Launch Next Round April 2026
New gTLD’s took 2.3% market share in the global domain market in 2025 while .com lost 1.3% and ccTLDs lost 1.0%. However, it is important to note that .com returned to growth of 3% after two years of shrinking. We are heading toward the opening of the Next Round New gTLD application window in April 2026 and New gTLD growth in 2025 outperformed all other groups of TLD’s. Let’s take a deeper look at the numbers.
Per Verisign’s DNIB.com statistics, global domains reached 386.9M, growing 22.6M over 2024 or 6.1%. This is the first time global domain growth has exceeded 6% since 2014, which just happened to be the year the last round of New gTLDs were launched. Overall, the New gTLD group grew 11M domains from 37M to 48M or 30% and accounted for 50% of the global growth.
The following graph depicts the shifting market share of global domains from 2012 through 2025.
ccTLDs lost 1% market share in 2025
New gTLDs gained 2.3% market share
.xyz at 113% growth to 8.1M
.top at 93% growth to 5.7M
Legacy gTLDs (except .com/.net/.org) increased 0.4% market share
.info at 39% growth to 5.1M
.mobi at 74% growth to 415K
.org was flat in market share
.net lost 0.3% in market share
.com lost 1.3% in market share
Now, let’s look at the companion metric of renewal rate. Renewal rate is important because it reflects a registrant’s choice to pay for the domain name at non-discounted rates. In this current market, discounting of first year purchase prices has become significant, leading to the continued growth in total domains under management (DUM).
Renewal rate gives greater insight into what domains are either in-use with a website, email, associated with brand-protection or viewed by a domain investor as a keeper in their portfolio.
The graph below depicts the renewal rates for .com, .net, other Legacy gTLDs (.org, .travel, .coop, .museum and others) and the New gTLD group. The .com TLD shows steady growth progression in renewal rate from 74% in 2019 to 75% in 2025 while also growing DUM from 145M to 161M. The .net TLD shows a higher growth in renewal rate from 76 to 78% over the same timeframe. The .net increase is likely due to fewer new registrations that were captured by the introduction of the New gTLDs as .net DUM fell from 13.4M in 2019 to 12.5M in 2025.
The New gTLD renewal rates stand in stark contrast to .com, .net and Legacy gTLDs. New gTLDs had a low of 26% in 2020 and a high of almost 40% in 2022 and have settled out at the low 30% for past few years. This indicates significant volumes of churn driven by substantial price discounting and speculation.
Long term value of a domain name is driven by usage. Some New gTLDs have substantially higher renewal rates than the average. As examples, .app achieved 67% renewal rate in Q3 2025 and .dev achieved 80%.
We will look deeper into renewal rates and their implications in the next blog.