.art: A Three-Letter Address for the Art World
.art is the newest extension in this group: it was delegated to the root zone on 9 June 2016, years after the first wave of the 2012 round. The IANA record names UK Creative Ideas Limited as sponsor. Three letters bring a practical advantage — the address stays short, it is easy to say out loud, and an artist's name needs no further explanation after it.
It fits artist portfolios, galleries, auction and collection sites, art fairs and design studios directly. In this field the site usually shows the work itself, and the address announces that in advance. No verified eligibility restriction was found, so registration appears open. When picking a name, a bulk domain name search speeds up testing the shorter variants too.
.ART Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation UK Creative Ideas Limited
- Delegated to the root zone 9 June 2016
- Length Three letters — among the shortest here
- Eligibility No published registry restriction could be verified
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .art domain
- Character Length 3 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.art Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$4.99 /year -
Transfer
$34.90 /year -
Renewal
$34.90 /year -
Restore
$119.90 -
Late Renewal
$7.00
Included With Every .art Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.art Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .art domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .art address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .art domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $7.00 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .art returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.art Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.art Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .art domain
- Character Length 3 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.art Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .art Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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No verifiable eligibility restriction applies. We could not reach a primary source showing that the registry asks you to prove you are an artist, register a gallery or submit a portfolio, so registration appears open. Artists, galleries, collectors, curators and design studios all take names on the same terms. A whois search is enough to see who holds a given name.
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Because it was delegated in 2016, years after the first wave of the 2012 round. New extensions did not arrive together; they joined the root zone as applications and contracts completed — some in 2013 and 2014, others much later. The practical consequence: in late arrivals, short and memorable names can stay free for longer, because the pool of people chasing them formed later.
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They do different jobs, and one does not replace the other. A gallery page brings you an existing audience, but you do not control it; when you part ways with the gallery, the link goes too. Your own address persists: the work list, exhibition history and contact details stay at the same place for years. The practical route is to run both and link from the gallery page to your own address.
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Prepare artwork photography at high resolution, then publish compressed versions sized for the screen. Uploading a 6000-pixel file for an image that will display at 1200 pixels slows the page down, and on a mobile connection most visitors will not wait. If you want to show detail, offer a separate enlargement link. A site at this scale runs comfortably on shared hosting.
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According to the project's registry data, both are supported on this extension. DNSSEC signs DNS answers so that attempts to return a forged response become detectable. WHOIS privacy limits how much personal detail from the registration record appears in public lookups, which can matter for independent artists trading under their own name. Check how your records appear with a whois search.
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