20 years of the .cat domain
Some things seem impossible until someone makes them happen. And then, suddenly, they seem inevitable.
On 23 April 2006, the .cat domain opened to the public. That Sant Jordi’s Day, as every year, people were buying roses and books. And on the internet — that 2006 internet where YouTube was one year old, Facebook was only for Mark Zuckerberg’s university friends, and where Instagram, TikTok, Spotify and OpenAI were words no one had ever heard — the Catalan-speaking community had just achieved something no one had done before: a domain of their own, internationally recognised, for a culture and a language without a state.
What if it had all been a dream?
Let’s imagine for a moment that this historic milestone had never happened. That in 2004, none of the 65,468 individuals, 2,615 companies and 98 entities and associations who made it possible to put forward the .cat candidacy before ICANN (the international body that regulates internet domains) had organised to claim a domain for our language and culture. The internet would have carried on, and Catalan might still not have carved out a space of its own there.
Perhaps today, when you went online looking for a local business, a cultural project or an initiative in Catalan, you would find only generic domains, indistinguishable from any other web address.
Perhaps today, when you searched in your browser of choice, none of the more than 117,000 domains generating content in our language and culture would appear.
Perhaps today you would not feel free enough to be fully yourself online, without having to give up your language or your culture.
Fortunately, that is not how things turned out.
The story of .cat has served as inspiration and a guide for many other communities in the same position as ours.
What could have remained just a dream has ended up becoming a legacy full of special recognition — including the Lluís Carulla Honorary Award (2010) and the Creu de Sant Jordi (2018), among many others.
20 years later, here we are
Today there are more than 117,000 active .cat domains on the internet, nearly nine out of ten users renew their domain year after year, and 69 registrars — both national and international — offer .cat domains around the world. Those who are part of the .cat community know that their domain is much more than a name on the internet.
Because behind every .cat there is a project that needs to be seen. An organisation fighting for a cause that should not have to worry about the cost of being online. A business trying to make its mark in a market of more than ten million consumers who speak its language. A teacher who today is helping students to carry on building the .cat legacy.
For them, and for every Catalan speaker on the web, Accent Obert — the entity behind the .cat domain — drives an ecosystem of projects funded by each and every .cat domain, making it possible for Catalan to exist, grow and be useful online.
What’s more, every new .cat and every renewed domain allows us to improve and develop new free tools for our community, such as:
ja.cat — Your favourite link shortener
va.cat — For sharing large files
jo.cat — Your entire digital presence in a single link
ssl.cat — The essential resource for verifying the validity of the digital certificate of any website
None of this would be possible without your .cat.
The role of .cat in the age of AI
Artificial intelligence has already changed the way we search for information, the way algorithms find it, and the way models decide which content is relevant.
In this new landscape, having a digital ecosystem of our own in Catalan is one of the best guarantees that our language will continue to be useful and visible.
That is why the .cat domain is leading an international project funded by ICANN Grants which, over two years and with the participation of eleven geo-territorial domains, analyses how search engines — both traditional and AI-powered — treat domains that represent cultural and linguistic identities on the web. The goal: to strengthen the visibility of Catalan and defend linguistic diversity as one of the fundamental pillars of the internet.
And now? Your domain writes the history
Having a domain with 20 years behind it says a great deal about the people who have been part of it. Those who were brave enough to come together to make it happen, those who have helped it grow and earn recognition around the world, and those who, every day, trust the .cat domain with who they are and what represents them.
The best is yet to come!
Thank you for being part of the .cat community.
