Buy .berlin Domain Name

Yes. The extension is community-based and asks for a connection to Berlin, but that connection does not require a company in the city. The policy lists three ways to prove it, and the second is a contact with a seat in Berlin entered in the WHOIS record. The third is any other suitable proof, such as a certificate from an employer, enrolment at a school or university, or a birth certificate. So someone born, educated or employed in Berlin can also meet the requirement.

No. The policy is explicit: no proof is required from the registrant either to apply or to register. The registry does, however, reserve the right to check the registration and the eligibility afterwards, at its own discretion. If the details you supplied turn out to be incomplete, both you and your registrar are notified and you have 14 days from the notice to correct them. If the conditions are still not met after that, the domain is deleted and registration fees already paid are not reimbursed.

Your registrar submits the application to the registry over EPP for a period of 1 to 10 years. A confirmation is returned if the registration succeeds and an error message if it fails. Immediately after registration the contact data required by ICANN can be retrieved through a WHOIS query, and the registry expects the registrant to check those entries at once and have any errors corrected by the registrar. You can look up a registered name on the WHOIS search page.

Yes, and this is the most distinctive rule of the extension. Because .berlin is community-based, the policy requires the domain to be put into use within 12 months of registration. In addition, if you publish a website on that address, its content must be directly related to the connection you relied on when you registered. If your plan is to hold a brand name idle for years, this clause is a genuine risk and should be factored in from the start.

Yes. The policy expressly permits a proxy or a privacy service to register a domain name on behalf of the actual owner. Practice matches it: the registry's WHOIS response states that personal data are not disclosed for privacy reasons. In return, the administrative contact shown in the WHOIS record must be a natural person authorised to make binding decisions for the domain owner, and only one administrative contact may be specified per domain.

Domain names can, as a matter of principle, be transferred to other registrants, but the incoming registrant must meet the Berlin connection requirement themselves — eligibility is tested again at transfer. Where a name was awarded through a special allocation process, changing registrar may be subject to additional conditions. If you want us to handle the move, you can start it from the domain transfer page.

There are two routes. The first is the standard ICANN set: the registry has implemented UDRP, URS, ERDRP, PDDRP and RRDRP, and every registrant accepts them on registration. The second is specific to this extension: the registry's own appeal procedure lets a rights holder block the transfer of the domain to a third party. While an appeal entry stands the owner may keep using the name but cannot transfer it; the entry can run for up to three years and carries a non-refundable administrative fee.