Summary

  • ICANN’s FY26 annual report records 32 proceedings, 375 submissions and an official average of 11.71 submissions per proceeding.
  • The five largest proceedings drew 146 submissions, or 38.9% of the total; the other 27 shared 229.

The public-comment box was open often. The crowd gathered around five files. ICANN’s annual report for the year ended 30 June 2026 counts 32 proceedings and 375 submissions. Its five busiest files drew 40, 37, 27, 25 and 17 submissions. Together that is 146, almost two in five of the year’s filings. The other 27 proceedings shared 229, an average of about 8.5 each.

The leading file was the draft guidelines for advancing Universal Acceptance adoption, with 40 submissions. Proposed language for the next round’s Applicant Guidebook followed with 37. The preliminary issue report on a DNS abuse mitigation policy process drew 27; a consultation on the proposed base registry agreement drew 25; and the second draft of the RIR Governance Document drew 17. The report gives a 50.9-day average proceeding length. Time at the microphone was broadly available; attention still clustered around particular decisions.

A filing count measures filings. A coalition can submit one document, and an individual can submit another. ICANN’s public-comment procedure publishes submissions, then an ICANN summary report identifies themes. The group that opened the proceeding reviews that report and addresses input before proposing next steps. Those records, read together, reveal whether a crowded file changed language, narrowed an option or simply filled an archive.

The new annual figures make one management question unusually concrete. ICANN can report the number of doors opened and papers received. For each of the five busy rooms, the institution can also point to the decision, the changed text and the reason. That is where a comment stops being a statistic and starts having a consequence.

Sources