.lat domain: who runs it and who can register

The IANA delegation record names XYZ.COM LLC as sponsoring organisation and current registry operator for .lat, under an ICANN Registry Agreement dated 16 October 2014. That's changed from the original setup: .lat was first delegated to eCOM-LAC, a Latin American and Caribbean internet trade federation, working with NIC México on infrastructure, before IANA recorded the transfer of the sponsoring organisation to XYZ.COM LLC in September 2022.

CentralNic shows up as the technical contact in the IANA record and runs the nic.lat nameservers and RDAP service, which suggests it's the back-end registry services provider handling the technical side of the zone. We couldn't confirm further detail on any wider corporate parent above XYZ.COM LLC, since the operator's own corporate page blocked automated access.

ICANN sets and enforces the policy framework through its registry agreement with XYZ.COM LLC, and that's the registry: the party contracted to maintain the authoritative database of .lat names. Registrars, the accredited retail companies referenced elsewhere in this guide, are who you actually buy a .lat name through, and they interface with the registry on your behalf. You, the registrant, hold the registration itself and deal only with your chosen registrar, never with XYZ.COM LLC or CentralNic directly.

Anyone can register a .lat domain. No residency requirement, no citizenship test, no need to run a business there. Names go first come, first served, according to registrar-facing sources such as Netim and AsiaRegistry. That rule sits at the registry level, set by the operator, so no individual seller can make it stricter or looser.

Registrars bolt on their own account and verification steps, accurate contact details before an order goes through, that sort of thing, but this is standard retail housekeeping rather than anything specific to .lat eligibility. There's no sunrise-only or trademark-holder-only phase running now. The original sunrise period happened in early 2015 around launch, and it's been general availability ever since.

Some strings get held back or priced as premium by the registry instead of selling at the standard rate. A short or dictionary-style .lat name can carry a registration or renewal cost well above the advertised list price, as shown in Dynadot's marketplace listings.

The registry's published term rules are simple enough: registrations run for a minimum of one year and a maximum of ten, renewable in one-year steps. That's confirmed by both AsiaRegistry and EuroDNS. Transfers work the same way they do across every gTLD: you get an authorisation code from the losing registrar, confirm at the gaining one, and then sit through the standard post-registration or post-transfer lock.

Past that point, nic.lat and XYZ.COM LLC don't publish their own grace, redemption or restore schedule, and retail sources don't agree on the details. Netim quotes a five-day transfer window and an €84 restoration fee, but other registrars list different renewal and restore prices entirely. These are registrar figures, not confirmed registry policy. Treat the exact grace-period length and redemption cost as unverified until you check with your own registrar when the domain is actually about to expire.

Pricing has shifted recently too. XYZ.COM LLC pushed its standard .lat registration, renewal and transfer price from $25 to $30 a year, effective 26 August 2025, per its own knowledge base notice. Use that $30 figure as the baseline registry-level cost, not whatever first-year discount a registrar happens to be advertising.

Verifiable live .lat sites are thin on the ground beyond the registry's own promotional patterns and the aftermarket. nic.lat itself suggests naming shapes such as YourBusiness.lat, YourCity.lat and YourName.lat, aimed at businesses, local attractions, services, individuals and brands with a Latin American connection. On the resale side, Dynadot's marketplace lists completed .lat sales and auctions such as action.lat and funding.lat. That shows some trading activity, but it tells you nothing about what actually gets built on those names once someone buys them.

Registrar pages from GoDaddy and Bluehost pitch .lat for businesses, communities and cultural identity sites targeting Latin American or Latino audiences. That's just the registry's own framing repeated back, not independent proof anyone's using it that way.

Before going live: DNSSEC is offered as an optional service by registrars such as Netim, but nothing in the registry's published material makes HTTPS, HSTS or DNSSEC mandatory. There's no sourced evidence of spam-filter problems specific to .lat, but it's still a young, low-volume extension, so test outbound mail before you trust a @yourbrand.lat address with anything important. It suits a primary domain for a genuinely regional or cultural brand far better than a blind redirect. For naming, stick to the registry's own limits: three characters minimum, hyphens allowed only in the middle of the string. And a name that reads naturally in Spanish or Portuguese does more work than an English generic term borrowed just for its brevity.