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Call for Proposals | UA Day 2026

25 March - 30 May 2026

Fourth annual UA Day to be celebrated between 25 March and 30 May 2026, with numerous local, national, and regional events with an emphasis on UA adoption.

Join the international multilingual Internet community in building a truly global, multilingual #Internet4All

First introduced in 2023, Universal Acceptance (UA) Day is an opportunity to mobilize local, national, regional, and global communities and organizations to champion UA on a global scale. UA is a technical best practice that ensures all valid domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, language or character length, can be equally used by all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. As in past years, UA Day 2026 events will consist of a mix of in-person, virtual, and hybrid sessions held by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), global partners, and regional and local organizations.

ICANN and UNESCO have been collaborating on UA Day since 2025, following a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote Internet inclusivity, multilingualism, and digital accessibility worldwide.

UNESCO leverages its global presence to advocate for UA as a key enabler of a multilingual Internet, contributing to awareness-raising, policy guidance, and the sharing of best practices with Member States and stakeholders. Through this partnership, UNESCO emphasizes the importance of Universal Acceptance in ensuring that all domain names and email addresses, regardless of script, language, or character length, can be equally used across all Internet-enabled applications, devices, and systems. This collaboration reinforces UNESCO’s commitment to fostering an inclusive, equitable, and culturally diverse digital world, building on the UNESCO 2003 Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace, the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (IDIL 2022–2032), and the broader framework of the Global Digital Compact.

Discover more about the past UA Day events on this page.

How to Organize a UA Day Event

Get involved with UA Day by organizing an event to promote UA awareness or adoption. Events should focus around one of the following types of session:

  • UA Awareness: Present the benefits of being UA-ready, basic technical concepts related to UA, and next steps to become UA-ready. There will be a limited number of UA awareness events. Proposals from the countries and organizations that have not held UA Day events before will receive preference.
  • UA Academic Curricula: Conduct curricular development sessions with academic faculty members and experts to integrate Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) and UA-related topics in existing technical curricula and design a roadmap for integration of the curriculum. Preference will be given to academic institutions.
  • UA Adoption and Demonstration: Conduct a UA adoption exercise and share challenges and solutions to become UA-ready, documenting the experience and sharing it during the UA Day event. ICANN will offer limited technical guidance to the shortlisted organizations to meet the UA adoption requirements. Before submitting a proposal, please review the specific requirements for UA Adoption and Demonstration Events.
  • UA Regional Strategy Review: Document the strategy based on the previous UA Day strategy event, and follow-up with stakeholders on the progress, present the results and discuss appropriate mechanisms for promoting and adopting UA at the local, national, and regional levels and update the regional strategy document. Proposals from past regional event organizers who participated between 2023 and 2025 will receive preference.

Events can be held at either the local or national level (largely focusing on a community within a country), or the regional level (involving multiple regional and national organizations from different countries in a region).

For more details on UA Day event formats, including links to relevant materials, see the section on Event Support below.

UA Day 2026 Timeline

Call for proposals: 9 October 2025

Deadline for submitting UA Day proposals: 9 November 2025 at the UA Day Event Proposal Form (Deadline extended to 24 November 2025, 9 am UTC).

Announcement of shortlisted UA Day events: 22 December 2025

Deadline for UA adoption qualification review: 28 February 2026

UA Day events: 25 March - 30 May 2026

Submit Your Proposal

Those interested in organizing a UA Day event must submit an event proposal through the UA Day Event Proposal Form by 9 November 2025. (Deadline extended to 24 November 2025, 9 am UTC). Submissions should specify any support needs for your event.

Stay Informed

A full calendar of UA Day 2026 events will be published in the coming months at this web page, which can also be accessed through the link https://universalacceptance.day.

Event Support

ICANN may provide limited support for UA Day events.

Resources provided:

  • Presentations for UA awareness, academic curricula, as well as adoption and demonstration sessions (will be available to download in February 2026)
  • Limited funding per guidelines below (upon request and subject to availability)
  • UA speakers or trainers (upon request and subject to availability)

Category

Duration of
Event

Materials
(available soon)

Available Funding
(Per Event)

Local or national **

One-hour or Two-hour UA Day Awareness Event
  • Awareness Presentation-1hr or 2hr
  • Promotional Video

N/A

Local or national **

Half-Day UA Day Awareness Event
  • Awareness Presentation-2hr
  • Promotional Video
  • Technical Overview-2hr

USD 750/-

Local or national
(only for universities or educational institutions)

Half-Day UA Day Academic Curricula Event
  • Awareness Presentation-2hr
  • Promotional Video
  • Academic Curriculum Discussion and Roadmap Development

USD 1000/-

Local or national

One-Day UA Day Adoption and Demonstration Event
  • Awareness Presentation-2hr
  • Promotional Video
  • Technical Adoption Experience-3hr

USD 3000/-

Regional
(Not more than one per region; Must have speakers and audience from at least three countries)

Half-Day UA Day Strategy Review Event
  • Strategy to promote adoption of UA nationally and regionally

USD 4000/-

** Applicants who have previously organized a UA Day event are encouraged to apply for UA academia or adoption events.

Note: As is typical for corporations in the U.S. and in many parts of the world, ICANN must abide by applicable laws and regulations before providing financial support to third parties.

UA Day Archive

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."