The new year is a good opportunity to look back, weigh up the work done and recharge our energy for what lies ahead. Last year was full of meetings, collaboration and spaces for sharing knowledge.
International meetings: ICANN and CENTR
The .barcelona domain was at the ICANN meeting in Seattle in March, which looked at key questions such as online crime and cybersecurity, matters that directly affect confidence on the internet and are essential for ensuring a safer and more stable digital ecosystem.
In May, the Jamboree at the CENTR in Lyon brought together experts and leaders in the domain sector from all over Europe. The meeting was conceived to exchange knowledge, share good practice and identify new opportunities for collaboration between registers, with a shared view to the future.
Language and community
September was a particularly active month. On one hand, we celebrated the European Day of Languages together with the .cat, .eus and .gal domains, with a special offer to register a .barcelona domain for €5, a move to favour linguistic diversity and digital identity on the internet.
That same month, the .barcelona domain also took part in the meeting by the GeoTLD Group in Holland, an occasion to share online linguistic and cultural diversity.
Last year was also a year of presence at home. At BizBarcelona we had the chance to discover holders of .barcelona domains and explain its advantages for emerging projects with city value.
Looking to 2026
Last year saw the start of the project “Assessing GeoTLD’s performance for enhanced Internet accessibility: An open source methodological approach”, headed by the .cat domain. This research project involves ten geoterritorial domains, including .barcelona, with the goal of developing open source methodology to analyse how traditional and AI-based search engines treat geographical and cultural domains.
The project was one of the 23 chosen from more than 200 presented to the ICANN, putting the .barcelona domain within research about the impact of artificial intelligence on the visibility of territorial domains. This will be a key project in 2026 and we will be explaining the main advances.
In October, the ICANN meeting in Dublin looked at the future of the internet. Registers, registration companies and institutional representatives met to discuss the main challenges for this sector, with an edition centring particularly on the new round of domains planned for 2026.
The .barcelona domain rounded off the year broadening its commercial network with thee new international registration companies: Namecheap, Spaceship and DomainName, a step allowing the domain to reach more people and giving the Barcelona brand an ever-increasing presence at an international level.All this has prepared us for a 2026 full of challenges. The domain will continue to work to strengthen the city’s digital identity and drive projects for the community.
