The .gal Domain: Galician Online, by Commitment
.gal entered the root zone on 13 March 2014, and the contracting party named in the IANA entry is Asociación puntoGAL, based in A Coruña. CORE Association, which appears as the administrative and technical contact, runs the infrastructure rather than the registry itself. The nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026 shows 8,520 registrations, of which 7,699 appear in the zone file.
This is not an ending anyone may take on request: the registration policy requires a nexus with the Galician linguistic and cultural community. That link is made through language, not territory, so someone living far from Galicia can still meet it. Test candidates with a .gal domain search, and to see how a comparable community ending is worded, read the .eus page.
The registry does not stop at writing a rule: it publishes a separate procedure for eligibility disputes, the .GAL Eligibility and Reconsideration Dispute Resolution Procedure. The registration policy also requires registrants to state the intended use of the name, treats a false statement as evidence of bad faith and makes it a ground for suspension. Compliance is checked after registration too, through a programme built on the criteria the TLD itself rests on. Read the condition properly rather than clicking past it.
.GAL Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation Asociación puntoGAL (A Coruña)
- Infrastructure provider CORE Association
- Root zone record 13 March 2014
- Eligibility condition A nexus with the Galician linguistic and cultural community
- Registered names 8,520 (nTLDstats, 12 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 7,699 names, about 90%
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .gal domain
- Character Length 3 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.gal 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
$5,000.00 /year -
Transfer
$5,000.00 /year -
Renewal
$5,500.00 /year
Included With Every .gal 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.
.gal Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .gal 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 .gal 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 .gal 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 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 .gal 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
.gal Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.gal Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .gal domain
- Character Length 3 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.gal Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .gal Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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No. The policy defines the link through language and culture, not territory.
Three routes satisfy it: using Galician in your online communications or undertaking to do so, promoting an aspect of Galician culture, or directing your communications and services specifically at that community. That is why diaspora associations and businesses based abroad can hold these names too.
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You declare what the name will be used for, and the declaration is compulsory rather than optional.
The registration policy requires registrants to state the intended use. A statement that turns out to be untrue counts as evidence of bad faith and supports suspension of the name. Practical advice: write the declaration against what the site will genuinely do, and if the plan changes, keep the site consistent with what you said.
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Yes. The policy requires the link to hold at registration and to continue afterwards.
Checking runs through a compliance programme built on the same criteria the ending rests on, and a separate procedure exists for disputes about it. Confirming who holds the name and whether its contact details are current through whois search makes any such review considerably easier to answer.
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They belong to one class but are not interchangeable: each serves a different community under a different registry.
What they share is that the restriction is linguistic and cultural rather than geographic, which separates them from regional endings. What differs is which community is defined and how the condition is policed. Read the Basque counterpart on the .eus page and the Catalan one on the .cat page.
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Of 8,520 registrations, 7,699 appear in the zone file — about 90%.
That is among the highest rates here, and it is what a conditional ending should look like: an eligibility requirement discourages taking names and sitting on them. The decision rule follows directly — if the short name you want is taken, there is very probably a working site behind it, and waiting for it to lapse is a poor plan.
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Yes. It runs on an authorisation code and the registry asks for no documents.
The point people miss with a conditional ending is that a transfer does not reset the eligibility requirement; the obligation follows the name to the new registrar unchanged. Before moving, review whether the use you declared still describes the site. Start from the domain transfer page.
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