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Renewing an Existing Accreditation

An ICANN registrar accreditation is granted for a term of five (5) years. In order for a registrar to maintain its accreditation, it must renew its Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) every five (5) years.

ICANN will attempt to contact every registrar by email approximately ninety (90) days prior to the expiration date of its accreditation to inform the registrar of the upcoming expiration of its accreditation. This communication will identify any registrar-related outstanding compliance issues involving the registrar and ask the registrar to confirm the accuracy of the registrar's contact information within ICANN's records.

Any registrar that intends to renew its accreditation must ensure the following:

  • it has no overdue invoice(s);
  • it is compliant with its Registrar Data Escrow requirements;
  • it has not been given notice by ICANN of three (3) or more material breaches of its RAA within the two (2) years preceding the RAA's expiration date;
  • the registrar confirms that it meets the ICANN registrar accreditation eligibility criteria listed in the Registrar Accreditation Agreement and the registrar accreditation application.
  • the primary contact or designee has completed the Registrar Training course at ICANN Learn;

Once it is determined that the registrar is in good standing, the RAA can be renewed.

Registrars accredited under the 2013 RAA should respond to ICANN's renewal reminders. Registrars on the 2013 RAA are generally deemed eligible for renewal unless:

  1. the registrar no longer meets accreditation requirements;
  2. the registrar is not in compliance with its obligations under the agreement;
  3. ICANN has notified the registrar of three material breaches of the agreement in the two years preceding the agreement's expiration date; or
  4. the agreement was terminated prior to the expiration date.

Questions about the RAA renewal process should be directed to registrar@icann.org. Renewal reminder notices are sent from reg-renewals@icann.org.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."