Verisign is closing two .name services: third-level names (john.smith.name) and registry email addresses (john@smith.name). ICANN approved both on 7 May 2026; registrants report deletion on 15 February 2027. The timeline with sources, the one-year block on shared surnames, the appeals still open, and a checklist to move your email to a domain you own.
.qa Domain Rules Changed on 22 October 2026: Who Can Still Register a Qatar Domain
Written by Steven White ·
Since 22 October 2026, a .qa domain is no longer open to anyone. Under the new Registration Policy (version 3.0) of the Qatar Domains Registry, a company needs a Qatari commercial registration or trade licence, or a trademark registered in Qatar, plus an official document its registrar can check; an individual must be a Qatari citizen or resident. Selling, renting or leasing a .qa is now prohibited, and existing .qa domains keep renewing but, according to the accredited registrar QHost, must pass the eligibility check before the holder can change the registrant, the contacts or the nameservers. You can check availability and the current requirements on our .QA domain page.
Checked on 26 October 2026 against the three version 3.0 policies published by Qatar’s Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA), which runs the Qatar Domains Registry, and against the previous version 2 policies. Section numbers in this article refer to those documents. Registry rules change, so this page gives dates and sources rather than prices.
What changed on 22 October 2026
The new rules took effect at midnight Qatar time (UTC+3) on 22 October 2026, when the registry moved to a new platform. That date comes from QHost, a CRA-accredited .qa registrar, and from Domain Name Wire (21 October 2026): the policy PDFs themselves only carry an issue date. CRA uploaded the new Registration and Transfer policies to its site on 18 October and the new Registrant Agreement on 19 October.
| Rule | Before (policy version 2) | Since 22 October 2026 (version 3.0) |
|---|---|---|
| Who can register a plain .qa | “Any Applicant”, with no documentary evidence (s. 17.1) | Only eligible applicants: Qatari company or trademark holder, Qatari citizen or resident, Qatari organisations and public bodies (s. 5.17.3) |
| Documents | None for .qa | Evidence of eligibility to the registrar, including an official document from a Qatari authority (s. 5.18.1.3-5.18.1.4) |
| Selling, renting or leasing a .qa | Not prohibited for .qa names (only for Arabic-script variants, s. 16.10) | Prohibited (s. 5.17.5) |
| Grace period after registration or renewal | 3 days (s. 21.1) | 5 days (s. 5.29.1.1, 5.29.2.1) |
| Maximum registration term | 5 years (plus 90 days) (s. 24) | 10 years (s. 5.32.1) |
| After the expiry date | Removed from the DNS at once; 30 days to renew (“Expired Hold”), then purged (s. 25) | Renewed automatically for 1 year, stays in the DNS for a 45-day grace period (s. 5.33, 5.29.3) |
| Deleted domain | 3 days pending delete, then purge (s. 23) | 30-day redemption period offline, then 1 day pending delete (s. 5.31) |
| Transfer to another registrar | Completed after 2 days; renewal optional | Completed after 5 days; 1-year renewal mandatory; no transfer within 60 days of registration or of the last transfer (Transfer Policy s. 5.5.2, 5.6.5; Registration Policy s. 5.29.4.6) |
| Holder stops qualifying | No eligibility to lose for .qa | “The Domain Name must be Deleted” (Transfer Policy s. 5.2.4) |
Who can register each Qatar domain now
The plain .qa and the Arabic-script .قطر now point to the same eligibility sections as the restricted zones, so the categories below apply to all of them.
| Zone | Who qualifies | Where to apply |
|---|---|---|
| .qa | Companies as for .com.qa; ICT firms as for .net.qa; Qatari citizens or residents as for .name.qa; Qatari non-profits, schools, government and military bodies (s. 5.17.3) | Accredited registrars (s. 5.17.4) |
| .com.qa | A valid Qatari trade licence or commercial registration (CR), or registered holder of a trademark in Qatar, and an official document from a Qatari authority showing the right to operate under the name (s. 5.18.1) | Accredited registrars in the State of Qatar |
| .net.qa | A Qatari licence for ICT services, or a Qatari trademark for an ICT product or service, plus the same official document (s. 5.19.1) | Accredited registrars in the State of Qatar |
| .name.qa | Qatari passport, Qatari ID, or Qatari residency permit (s. 5.20.1) | Accredited registrars |
| .org.qa, .sch.qa, .edu.qa, .gov.qa, .mil.qa | Qatari non-profits, schools and universities, government and military bodies (s. 5.21-5.24) | The registry directly |
| .قطر | The same categories as .qa (s. 5.25.2) | Accredited registrars |
Two things apply across the board. Applicants must meet the requirements “when submitting their application and for the term of the associated Domain Name License Period” (s. 5.27.3), and every registrant warrants at registration and at each renewal that it “meets, and will continue to meet” the policies (Registrant Agreement, s. 5.2.2).
Can a foreign company still register a .qa?
Yes, but only through the trademark route. A company with no Qatari commercial registration can qualify as the “registered holder of a trademark in the State of Qatar” (s. 5.18.1.2). The same section adds that the registrant “shall submit a valid and current official document issued by a competent governmental or regulatory authority within the State” showing its right to operate under the name in the domain (s. 5.18.1.3). The policy does not say whether the trademark registration certificate alone meets that requirement, so plan for the Qatari registration certificate plus whatever official document the registrar asks for.
For an individual there is no foreign route: a .qa or .name.qa requires Qatari nationality or a Qatari residency permit. A trademark application that is still pending is not a registered trademark. If you need one, you can register a trademark in Qatar through Protect.TM. The same pattern (a local trademark unlocks a restricted country domain) applies in several other countries, listed in our guide to ccTLD local presence requirements.
QHost puts it the same way: international applicants “can no longer assume that .qa registration is unrestricted”, but “may qualify under certain categories, such as qualifying trademark or commercial rights”.
If you already own a .qa domain
Existing domains are not cancelled on 22 October. What changes is what happens the next time you touch them. QHost reports these clarifications from CRA, received on 21 October 2026 (they are not written in the policy PDFs):
- Renewal continues. Existing domains stay under the new platform’s automatic renewal.
- Changes trigger verification. “Eligibility verification must be completed before processing modifications to existing domain registrations, including applicable DNS updates”: changes of registrant, contact details, nameservers and other registration data.
- Failing means deletion. If the registrant does not meet the requirements when verification is required, “the registrar must delete the domain”. It then enters the 30-day redemption period, during which it is removed from the zone and the website and email stop working (s. 5.29.5.3).
- Nameservers versus DNS records. Changing the nameservers is a registry transaction. Editing A, MX, TXT or CNAME records at an external DNS provider, without changing the nameservers, “normally does not involve an EPP transaction at the registry”, but QHost notes that CRA has not specified every external DNS scenario.
- Renewals may be reviewed. CRA has recommended that registrars review the eligibility of existing registrants to avoid renewing domains that would later have to be deleted.
In practice: if you hold a .qa without a Qatari CR, trademark or residency, avoid changing its nameservers or registrant data until you have the documents to qualify, and make sure your registrar can reach you.
No more selling or renting a .qa
Section 5.17.5 is short: “Registrants of (.qa) Domain Names may not sell, rent, or lease a (.qa) Domain Name to another party.” The Transfer Policy states the intent that names subject to eligibility “should not be Registered to be sold to another party for commercial gain” (s. 5.2.2) and limits changes of registrant to listed situations (s. 5.2.3):
- sale of all or part of the business, with the domain listed in the deed of sale;
- transfer of intellectual property that includes the domain;
- insolvency, transfer between subsidiaries of the same entity, or a domain registered by an agent for a client;
- a power of attorney assigned because of illness or death;
- an order of a court, arbitrator or tribunal, or a dispute settlement that includes the domain.
In every case the new registrant must meet the eligibility requirements (s. 5.2.5), the request must be in writing and signed (a phone call or email is not enough, s. 5.2.6.1), and the registry keeps the right to investigate any transfer (s. 5.3). For domain investors, a .qa is no longer an asset that can be resold on the open market.
The new lifecycle: grace periods, auto-renewal, redemption and transfers
| Stage | Length | What it means | Section |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add grace period | 5 days | A new registration can be cancelled with a registry refund to the registrar. QHost says registrars may use it to collect and check documents, and delete the domain if the applicant does not qualify | 5.29.1 |
| Renew grace period | 5 days | A renewal can be reversed | 5.29.2 |
| Auto-renew grace period | 45 days after expiry | Every domain is renewed for 1 year at expiry and stays in the DNS while the registrar confirms the renewal | 5.33, 5.29.3 |
| Redemption | 30 days after deletion | Offline; the registrar can restore it with a restore report within 7 days, charged as a new registration | 5.29.5, 5.31.7 |
| Pending delete | 1 day | No changes possible; then purged and open to the next eligible applicant | 5.31.3-5.31.6 |
| Transfer lock | 60 days | After registration and after each transfer | Transfer Policy 5.5.2 |
| Transfer | 5 days | Completes automatically after 5 days unless accepted earlier; the registrant can object during that window; includes a mandatory 1-year renewal; the losing registrar cannot charge a fee | Transfer Policy 5.5.4, 5.5.6, 5.6.5; Registration Policy 5.29.4.6 |
| Policy deletion | Immediate | A domain deleted for breaching the policies is removed permanently, with no redemption | 5.35 |
A note on refunds: the 5-day refund in the policy is paid by the registry to the registrar. As QHost points out, it does not automatically mean a refund to the customer, which depends on each registrar’s terms.
What we checked, and what is still unclear
- Read in the source: CRA’s Registration, Expiry, Renewal and Deletion Policy, Transfer Policy and Registrant Agreement, all version 3.0, and the previous version 2 of the first two (Internet Archive copy of December 2022).
- Attributed, not in the PDFs: the 22 October 2026 start date (QHost, Domain Name Wire) and the verification of existing domains when they are modified (CRA’s clarification as reported by QHost).
- Not defined: whether a Qatari trademark certificate on its own satisfies the “official document” requirement of s. 5.18.1.3, and how external DNS changes are treated. The old rule that .com.qa sites be hosted in Qatar is not repeated in version 3.0; QHost advises against reading the omission as a confirmed removal, and so do we.
- Out of date elsewhere: on 26 October 2026 many registrar help pages, and WIPO’s ccTLD page for .qa, still described .qa as unrestricted.
Checklist: getting or keeping a .qa after 22 October 2026
- Pick your category: Qatari company (CR or trade licence), trademark registered in Qatar, Qatari citizen or resident, or a Qatari organisation.
- Gather the documents before you order: CR or licence, or the Qatari trademark registration, plus an official document from a Qatari authority; for individuals, Qatari ID, passport or residency permit.
- Make sure the applicant name matches the documents exactly.
- Expect the registrar to verify after the order: the registration can still be deleted within the 5-day grace period if the documents do not qualify.
- If you already own a .qa and do not qualify, do not change nameservers, registrant or contacts until you do.
- Do not plan to sell or rent a .qa: only the transfers listed in the Transfer Policy are allowed.
- Renew on time: after deletion you have a 30-day redemption window, with the domain offline.
If you qualify, you can check availability and order a .qa, .com.qa or .net.qa on our .QA domain page, which lists the documents we ask for. For background on the extension itself, see the .qa domain explained.
