.wien Domain: A Zone Reserved for the Vienna Community
The .wien extension entered the root zone on 19 December 2013; its ICANN agreement is dated 28 October 2013 and the registry operator is punkt.wien GmbH, which applied in 2011 with a letter of support from the City of Vienna. On 14 August 2026 the zone held 16,454 registrations, and roughly ninety percent of them were visible in the zone file.
This is a community extension and the condition sits inside the agreement: names are open to any person or organisation able to show an economic, cultural, touristic, historical, social or other connection to the Austrian capital. Businesses trading in Vienna, associations and cultural institutions form the core of the zone. Try candidates on the .wien domain search page.
The registry's own guideline says it plainly: whether the connection requirement is met is not checked at the moment of registration. The community section of the agreement nevertheless requires the name to be used in a meaningful connection with Vienna, and that requirement runs for the whole registration term. The operator carries out recurring audits, gives 20 days to comply and can take a non-compliant name out of the zone afterwards. Eligibility can also be tested by third parties through a dispute procedure. The decision rule: registering is easy, but your page has to be able to show its Vienna connection.
.WIEN Domain at a Glance
- Registry operator punkt.wien GmbH
- Root zone entry 19 December 2013
- Registry agreement 28 October 2013; includes a community section
- Eligibility Economic, cultural, touristic, historical or social link to Vienna
- Zone size 16,454 registrations (14 August 2026)
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .wien domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.wien 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
$58.96 /year -
Transfer
$58.99 /year -
Renewal
$63.49 /year -
Restore
$196.94 -
Late Renewal
$9.46
Included With Every .wien 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.
.wien Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .wien 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 .wien 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 .wien 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 $9.46 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 .wien 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
.wien Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.wien Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .wien domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.wien Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .wien Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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The condition is not residence but a demonstrable connection to Vienna.
The community section of the agreement accepts an economic, cultural, touristic, historical or social link and asks for no Vienna address. An organisation selling into the city, running events there or publishing about it falls inside the scope. A project with no such link, by contrast, stays open to challenge, because eligibility can be tested through a dispute procedure.
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No. The registry's guideline states plainly that the connection requirement is not checked at the time of registration.
That does not mean the requirement is absent: the check is simply moved to the usage stage. The operator runs recurring audits and gives a non-compliant name 20 days to put things right, after which the name can be taken out of the zone. Asking for no paperwork is a choice about timing, not an exemption.
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Under the agreement the registry operator may step in.
The community section requires the name to be used in a meaningful connection with Vienna; the operator audits regularly, allows 20 days to comply and can remove the name from the zone if nothing changes. Third parties can also test eligibility through a dispute procedure. The rule of thumb: make the connection visible on the page — a local contact address, an event or regional content does that concretely.
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The extension is not a ranking factor by itself, but it works on the human side.
In a results list an address carrying the city name sends a clearer signal than a generic one and can lift the click-through rate. The bigger gain is expectation setting: a visitor knows before clicking that a local service is waiting. Content has to back that up — an address never substitutes for genuinely local material on the page. Test candidate names on the .wien domain search page.
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Yes, it is a generic top-level domain with standard transfer rules.
Unlock it, obtain the authorisation code and start the process on the domain transfer page. A transfer does not switch off the eligibility condition: the new holder must also be able to show a connection to Vienna. If you want to inspect the registration record first, check the status codes with our whois search tool.
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