ICANN Request for Proposal: Name Collision Temporary Delegation

Today, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) issued a request for proposal (RFP) to identify a service provider to operate the Name Collision Temporary Delegation process for the New Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) Program: 2026 Round.

Name collision refers to the situation in which a resource name that is intended to be resolved in one name system is inadvertently resolved in a different naming system, potentially leading to unexpected behavior such as communication being disrupted or redirected from its intended recipient. Strings that are not identified as potentially high-risk as described in Section 7.7.2 of the Applicant Guidebook will undergo Temporary Delegation.

During Temporary Delegation, ICANN will temporarily delegate the gTLD (i.e., the string) from the root zone to the provider's DNS servers. Depending on the decisions of ICANN's Technical Review Team (TRT), gTLDs would be delegated to these nameservers for between 90 days and one year, after which the delegation would be removed from the root zone. In some cases (known as "visual interruption"), ICANN will also request that the provider receive and monitor network traffic sent to dedicated addresses allocated for the gTLD.

Interested providers are invited to submit proposals that ICANN will then evaluate for capability and expertise.

This is a public RFP, which means that any prospective vendor may participate.

For a complete overview of this RFP, including the timeline, please consult the RFP Overview webpage.

Indications of interest should be emailed to [email protected]and include the following information:

• Name of the organization
• Name of the contact
• Email address of the contact

Official responses to the RFP should be electronically submitted using ICANN's sourcing tool by 23:59 UTC on 6 April 2026. Access to this tool may be requested via the same email address.

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