The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG) have released the Universal Acceptance (UA) Day 2025 Report, which offers a detailed overview of this year's global engagement, event formats, and promotional reach. Building on the momentum of previous years, UA Day 2025 saw sustained interest and participation across all metrics, reflecting the growing global commitment to UA readiness. This year also marked the first year that ICANN partnered with UNESCO to promote UA on a global scale.
Universal Acceptance ensures that all domain names and email addresses, regardless of length, language, or script, can be used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. UA provides the gateway to the next billion Internet users.
First launched in 2023, UA Day continues to serve as a global rallying point for raising awareness and mobilizing support for UA among technical and language communities, governments, businesses, and the Domain Name System (DNS) industry. Now in its third year, UA Day 2025 featured a wide array of events focused on UA adoption, technical skill development, awareness-building, and implementation strategy – offering something for everyone invested in making the Internet more multilingual and inclusive through UA.
As in previous years, UA Day events were held from March through May. While most events were clustered around 28 March 2025, the extended time frame allowed for broader participation and deeper regional engagement. The call for session proposals once again welcomed formats such as awareness sessions, technical training, adoption exercises, academic curricula design, and strategy discussions.
UA Day 2025 Participation Snapshot:
- Total Participants: 7,695
- Proposals Received: 110
- Events Short-Listed and Held: 59
- Countries and Territories Represented: 55
- Languages Represented: 23 (Arabic, Armenian, Bangla, Burmese, Chinese, English, Filipino, French, Galician, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Kiswahili, Lao, Marathi, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Sesotho, Sinhala, Spanish, Thai, Tongan, and Urdu)
A major highlight of UA Day 2025 was the strengthened collaboration between ICANN and UNESCO that brought an added layer of international visibility and support to UA Day. UNESCO's national representatives participated in various UA Day events, including the flagship event in Hanoi, Viet Nam. Held on 8 May 2025 in conjunction with the Contracted Parties Summit 2025 and the APAC DNS Forum 2025, the event featured speakers from diverse stakeholder groups and highlighted the challenges, solutions, and progress on UA adoption.
A sincere thank you to everyone who organized, participated in, or supported UA Day 2025. Your continued efforts are driving momentum for UA, helping ensure that all Internet users, regardless of where they live or what language they speak, can use any valid domain name or email address in the language or script of their choice.
To dive deeper into this year's activities, read the full UA Day 2025 Report. For a global snapshot of UA Day 2025 in action, check out the photo gallery on ICANN's Flickr page. To stay connected, follow the hashtag #Internet4All on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X.
