.au domain names

From 24 March 2022, the registration of domain names directly under .au is available under the first come first served basis.

Gandi offers .au registration to legal persons registered in Australia and to owners of an Australian trademark. Except when the eligibility is based on a trademark where the domain name must be identical to the trademark, the choice of the domain name is free, no link required with the applicant or its activity.

Priority rights

The current holders of a domain name under a .au second level extension (registered before 24 March 2022) have a priority right to register the corresponding .au domain name. This priority period runs from 24 March to 20 September 2022.

The use of your priority right

To use your priority right, you have to make a registration request for the corresponding .au domain name before the end of the priority period. The domain name will be then allocated to you or not, depending of the contention resolution in accordance with the registry priority rules.

You will have to provide the token associated to the domain name that confers your priority right. This token can be retrieved via the Registry tool: https://priority.auda.org.au. If you hold several domain names that confer a priority right for the same .au domain name, your registration request must be based on the domain name having the higher priority.

It is possible to decline one or all of your priority rights via the Registry tool: https://priority.auda.org.au.

Allocation in priority period

If you are the only holder of a priority right, you will obtain the .AU domain name immediately after making your registration request.

If several persons are holding the same domain name under different second-level extensions, there may be a contention between them. You can check the priority rights for a same domain name and their status via the Registry tool: https://www.auda.org.au/tools/priority-status-tool.

If there are conflicting rights, that is if more than one person having a priority right to the same .au domain name make a registration request before 21 September 2022, the registry has implemented the following contention resolution rules:

• Domain names registered prior to February 5, 2018 00:00 UTC (category 1) have priority over domain names registered after that date (category 2).
• If there is a conflict within category 1:
  An agreement must be made between the applicants, without which the .au domain name will remain “reserved” until only one valid registration request remains. A registration request can become invalid in the following situations: the applicant withdraws or does not renew its request annually (renewal entails a fee), the applicant is no longer eligible to register the .au domain name nor the domain name under the second-level extension that confers its priority right or does not renew it.
• If there is a conflict within category 2:
  The .au domain name will be allocated to the holder of priority right based on the domain name that has been registered first.

Registration fees are not refundable even if You do not obtain the domain name.

Verification of your data

Beforehand, please check the holder contact information for Your domain name(s) is correct and up to date. Your .AU registration request must contain the same holder contact information which will no longer be modifiable once you have made the registration request and until the contention is resolved.