.link domain names: registry and eligibility

The IANA root record names Nova Registry Ltd., based in Valletta, Malta, as the sponsoring organisation and current registry operator for .link. It took over the role from Uniregistry, Corp. when the delegation transfer completed on 19 May 2022, according to IANA's delegation record. Nova Registry lists Link Freedom Group as its corporate parent, though that relationship doesn't actually show up in the IANA or ICANN paperwork. Technical operation sits with Tucows.com, Co., named as technical contact in the IANA record, and the published nameservers run on the trs-dns infrastructure tied to Tucows.

ICANN still holds the policy strings. The .link registry agreement is a standard, non-sponsored base contract signed 14 November 2013. Three separate roles operate underneath that agreement. The registry, Nova Registry, writes the rules for the .link namespace and keeps the master database. Registrars, the accredited companies you actually buy from, GoDaddy or Porkbun among them, handle sales, billing and support, then pass instructions upstream to the registry. The registrant is you, the person or organisation whose name and contact details land on the WHOIS record once a .link domain gets registered. These roles don't overlap, and a registrar has no power to change registry-level rules such as premium pricing or eligibility.

.link has open registration. No eligibility restrictions are attached to the extension itself. Anyone, an individual or an organisation, can register a .link domain through any ICANN-accredited registrar on a first-come, first-served basis, according to GoDaddy's help documentation on .link domains. There's no requirement to show a connection to links, technology or any particular industry, which is a relief compared with restricted gTLDs that demand proof of sector membership before you can even check out.

That openness is a registry-level rule set by Nova Registry under its ICANN agreement. Registrars can bolt on their own practices, identity verification for abuse prevention, bundled privacy services, that sort of thing, but they can't invent eligibility requirements the registry itself doesn't impose. The one registry-level wrinkle worth watching is the premium tier. Nova Registry keeps a set of names priced above standard rates, and in June 2025 it announced the release of more than 600,000 previously reserved premium .link names from 7 July 2025, per ICANNWiki's record of the announcement. Whether a given name counts as premium, and what it costs, is decided by the registry and shown by the registrar at checkout, not something you can guess from the extension's general open-registration rule.

.link runs on a standard base ICANN registry agreement, non-sponsored, so it falls under the usual generic top-level domain consensus policies rather than any bespoke rulebook. Transfers between registrars follow the normal drill: unlock the domain at your current registrar, grab the authorisation code, confirm the move at the gaining registrar. A 60-day lock applies after initial registration, after a completed transfer, and after most registrant changes, per ICANN policy. ICANN's GNSO voted in 2025 to scrap this lock across gTLDs, but as of the sources checked here, the change hadn't taken effect yet.

Being a non-sponsored gTLD, .link falls under the Expired Registration Recovery Policy, which gives you a 30-day Redemption Grace Period after deletion. During that window the previous registrant can restore the name through their registrar, per the ERRP. Redemption usually costs extra on top of the standard renewal price, though the actual figure is set by each registrar, not published centrally by the registry.

The dossier doesn't confirm .link's minimum or maximum registration term, or Nova Registry's specific restore fee. Check both directly with your registrar before committing to a name, especially a premium one.