Towards the end of last year we noticed .nz domains were slowly tracking towards a new record high. In the first half of 2026, .nz domains have just kept growing and surpassed that record month after month after month.
We’ve said before, and will say again, that total domain registrations look a lot like an economic indicator for the country. It’s by no means a perfect one, but if business creation and website creation go hand-in-hand, then the theory holds water. And if we’re right about that, then 2026 is looking like the year when New Zealand is finally climbing out of some grim times.
That record we were close to passing? We’ve passed it
Every month New Zealand’s Domain Name Commission shares reports highlighting the latest .nz domain stats. The most recent report shows .nz domains have kept growing and growing in 2026. All that steady growth we’d seen in the back half of 2025 has been met with a booming first half of the year.
In January 2026, almost 2,000 new .nz domains were created. This took us past the previous all-time-high of 758,495 domains. After a particularly strong February, and continued momentum through March and April, we’ve now reached a new record of 767,053 registered domains.
The month of major growth
Usually, domain numbers change up or down by about 1,000 per month. If it’s been a month with lots of movement, we’d potentially see change in the 2,000 range. In February 2026, .nz domains grew by nearly 4,500. There hasn’t been a boom in .nz domains that big since March 2017, when thousands of conflicted domains were resolved.
Comparing months against each other looks really optimistic. The tail end of 2025 threatened to dip downwards, but since the new year the trend line has only been heading upwards. If this momentum sustains, we could see a year of really strong growth for .nz domains (if the global economy doesn’t collapse in that time).
Year-on-year growth rates (the % increase in domains year-on-year) show even more promising signs. This April had 2.1% growth year-on-year. That’s noteworthy because this is the first time since mid-2023 that .nz domains have had growth rates over 2.0%.
Deletions still outpacing creations, but closing in
The Domain Name Commission’s data also shows us how many .nz domains are created and deleted each month. Like the growth rate and total domain count, the create and delete data tells an optimistic story about the namespace. The Commission calculates domain creations and deletions with a 6-month moving average, likely done this way to account for domains being uncancelled. An uncancelled domain is a domain that’s set to expire, but is renewed within its 90-day redemption period rather than deleted. These stats are calculated without counting uncancels as either creations or deletions.
Domain creations have been trailing behind deletes going all the way back to January 2023. When we analysed the Commission’s stats in the back half of 2025, we noticed that the monthly creations line was trending closer and closer to deletions. As of April 2025, creations are now closer than ever to catching up. With 8,998 new .nz domains created and 9,044 domains deleted in April, that gap is now smaller than 50 domains. It’s looking increasingly likely that these lines will cross in the coming months.
The last time domain creations outpaced deletions on a six-month rolling average was the start of 2023. Going back to the idea of domain stats as a window on the economy, it would be very healthy to see this trend return.
Direct .nz domains carrying the pack
A ~15,000 year-on-year increase in the .nz namespace is significant. InternetNZ’s stats give us data showing which second-level domains (2LDs) those new domains are coming from.
The biggest contributor to the last 12 months’ growth is the .nz direct domain. Between April 2026 and April 2025, 7,342 more .nz direct domains were added. That accounts for nearly 50% of the total namespace growth in that time. That’s particularly impressive for a 2LD that makes up ~22% of the total namespace (currently there’s 166,765 .nz direct domains registered).
Over in Australia, the .au direct domain has also been a big factor in the .au namespace’s growth, too. The overall .au namespace grew by ~76,000 domains between March 2026 and March 2025. The .au direct 2LD accounted for 24,924 of that growth–almost ⅓ of the total namespace’s growth from a 2LD that makes up ~18% of the namespace. It’s very similar to the .nz direct situation, the growth of both direct domains seems to be happening in parallel.
Renewal rates teetering
A namespace’s renewal rate lists pretty much what it says. Every month a number of .nz domains are due for renewal. The renewal rate measures the proportion of those domains that are actually renewed.
Between 2022 and 2024, the .nz renewal rate was dropping. Since then it’s lingered between 83% and 86%. Our outlook was a bit gloomy last time we looked at renewal rates, commenting that renewals were a drag on growth.
The situation looks to be more or less the same now. Renewal rates took a big dip in the last couple months of 2025, and after recovering a little bit at the start of 2026 are now back to where they were in September last year: 84.6%.
It's worth noting that the Commission has begun sharing the .nz domain retention ratio, instead of the renewal rate. The retention ratio shows the percentage of .nz domains that are more than a year old. It's a different way to answer the same basic question: Are people holding their domains for the long term? The two numbers aren't directly comparable, but since the DNC has changed its metrics we have included both the renewal rate and the retention ration in the above graph.
Better by comparison: 85% is much better than 75%
While .nz domain renewal rates seem to be floating around that ~85% mark, that renewal rate begins looking strong when you compare it to comparable namespaces. Over in Australia, .au domain renewal rates have been tracking downwards so steadily that .au domains are now only renewed at a 75% rate. In the UK, .uk domains are renewed 78-80% of the time.
Whether NZ returns to 90% or not, we’re still at a healthy level on these international comparisons.
Looking to register a new domain?
If you’re looking for a new .nz, .au or any other domain, you can get it right here at SiteHost. At the end of 2025, we officially became a registrar of .au domains, meaning there’s never been a better time to get .au domains