The .joburg Domain: Johannesburg's City Ending
.joburg was recorded in the root zone on 5 June 2014; its ICANN registry agreement is dated 24 March 2014 and the operator is ZA Central Registry NPC, a non-profit company incorporated in South Africa. The nTLDstats page accessed on 12 August 2026 shows 3,085 registrations, 2,184 of them present in the zone file.
The operator runs the ending to digitise South African cities, with the aim of letting communities trade under their own city name. Local businesses, neighbourhood directories, events and tourism sites use it. Try candidates through a .joburg domain search, and look at the .durban page from the same registry.
The operator's 25-page published registration policy (version 3, 6 January 2015) defines no eligibility, residency or local presence requirement; the document contains not one line requiring a presence in Johannesburg. What it does define is naming rules: two-character names sit on the reserved list and cannot be registered, a label may run to 63 characters, and nameservers are not verified for authority at registration. The policy also permits ASCII characters only in names: letters, digits and the hyphen. So you may register from outside the city, though without showing a local connection the ending will not meet expectations on its own.
.JOBURG Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation ZA Central Registry NPC (South Africa)
- ICANN registry agreement 24 March 2014
- Root zone record 5 June 2014
- Eligibility condition None; the policy asks for no residency or presence
- Registered names 3,085 (nTLDstats, 12 August 2026)
- Present in the zone file 2,184 names, about 71%
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .joburg domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.joburg 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
$43.08 /year -
Transfer
$43.09 /year -
Renewal
$46.39 /year -
Restore
$140.98 -
Late Renewal
$4.40
Included With Every .joburg 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.
.joburg Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .joburg 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 .joburg 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 .joburg 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 $4.40 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 .joburg 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
.joburg Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.joburg Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .joburg domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.joburg Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .joburg Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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No; the operator's registration policy asks for no residency or local presence.
The twenty-five page document contains not a single line about an eligibility condition, and no papers are requested. The address does carry a city name, though, so visitors look for a local address, a local phone number and delivery details. Without those, the ending alone will not create a local impression.
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Two-character names count as reserved and cannot be registered; a label may run to 63 characters.
The policy permits only letters, digits and the hyphen in names. It also states that nameserver authority is not verified at registration, so entering the wrong server leaves the address offline while the registration still completes. Always check your zone file after setup.
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Choose the ending of the city where your audience actually is; that works most directly.
Both endings belong to the same operator and run on similar policies, so the difference is geography rather than rules. If you serve several cities, keeping one primary address and redirecting the others is more manageable. See the .durban page for the comparison.
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2,184 of 3,085 registrations appear in the zone file, roughly 71 percent.
The zone is small, so short single-word roots remain findable. Combinations adding a suburb, a service or a sector are almost entirely open. You can test a long candidate list in one pass with bulk domain name search.
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You can; the move runs on an authorisation code and no extra documents are requested.
The typical problem for local businesses is a name sitting in a web designer's account, so the transfer stalls once contact is lost. Confirm the current holder through whois search and switch the contact address to one you control yourself.
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