ICANN opened a two-week window on October 8, 2026, letting any of the 1,616 applicants proceeding in its 2026 new-gTLD round swap their primary applied-for string for a pre-designated backup, with no coordination or compensation allowed between applicants, according to ICANN’s own published schedule. The window closes October 21 — but the public list showing which applicants actually switched will not appear until String Confirmation Day, November 17, nearly four weeks later.

October 7 to October 21: What Actually Opened, and Why It’s Easy to Miss

ICANN published the applied-for strings and applicants for the 2026 round on Reveal Day, October 7, 2026, at 18:00 UTC, confirming that 1,616 of the 1,663 submitted applications would proceed, according to ICANN’s own announcement and CircleID’s coverage of the milestone. That list — the one most brand and trademark teams ran their first clearance check against — is already provisional.

A separate window, running from 00:01 UTC on October 8 to 23:59 UTC on October 21, 2026, lets applicants that designated an eligible backup string in their original filing elect to switch their application to it instead, according to ICANN’s announcement and a Lexology summary of the round’s deadlines. Only one replacement per application is allowed, and a replacement string cannot duplicate another applicant’s primary or replacement string already on the published list, per the rules explainer published by industry site gtld.blog.

What a Replacement String Actually Lets an Applicant Do

The mechanism is narrower than a full re-application: a replacement string cannot be used to create new contention or expand an existing contention set beyond what already exists, according to gtld.blog’s reading of ICANN’s applicant rules. Applicants are also barred from coordinating a replacement decision with another applicant or accepting compensation tied to it — a conduct rule aimed at the same kind of behind-the-scenes dealing this blog covered in ICANN’s ban on contention-set payoffs for the .Agent round. The two rules share a target but govern different moments: one covers withdrawing from a contention set for a price, the other covers switching strings without telling anyone outside ICANN until weeks later.

Why November 17 Is Nearly a Month Too Late for Anyone Watching October’s List

Once the Reveal Day list went live, it became the reference point most outside counsel used to benchmark their own marks against the round. If an applicant swaps into a backup string during the October 8–21 window that happens to collide with a brand’s trademark, nothing published by ICANN reflects that until String Confirmation Day on November 17 — when the agency releases a final list of all applied-for strings and an updated set of contention sets, under its own stated schedule. For five and a half weeks, the only parties who know who actually switched are ICANN and the applicants themselves.

ICANN has not disclosed how many of the 1,616 proceeding applications hold an eligible backup string in the first place, so even the scope of what could change between October 7 and November 17 is unpublished. A brand team cannot distinguish a quiet, narrow correction from a wave of switches without waiting for the same November date everyone else is waiting for.

What This Means for Brand and Licensing Teams Watching From ASEAN

The timing lands squarely during ICANN87, the organization’s annual general meeting running October 17 to 22, 2026, in Bali, Indonesia — the first public ICANN meeting since the 2026 round’s application window closed, where the board is scheduled to review new-gTLD milestones and how auction proceeds from the round might eventually be allocated, according to a CircleID preview of the meeting agenda. For patent and trademark teams with any stake in the round, the practical takeaway is to stop treating the October 7 snapshot as final. The list that matters for enforcement planning, objection deadlines and licensing decisions is the one that comes out November 17 — not the one most teams already filed away.

Key takeaways

  • ICANN’s 2026-round replacement window runs October 8 to 21, 2026, letting eligible applicants swap to a pre-filed backup string with no public disclosure until String Confirmation Day.
  • The next official update to the applied-for string list is November 17, 2026 — not the October 7 Reveal Day snapshot that most brand teams used for their first clearance pass.
  • ICANN bars applicants from coordinating replacement-string decisions or paying for them, but that rule governs conduct between applicants, not when the public finds out what changed.
  • ICANN has not published how many of the 1,616 proceeding applications hold an eligible backup string, so the scope of what could still change before November 17 is unknown outside the applicants themselves.
  • A brand or licensing team that cleared its marks against the October 7 list should rerun that search after November 17, before contention and objection deadlines close.