.be

Top-level Internet domain for Belgium April 2025 .be DNS Belgium logo (en).svg 5 August 1988 (added to root zone) Country code top-level domain Active DNS Belgium DNS Belgium 1,746,459 2022-12-10 2022-12-10 Statistics DNS Belgium https://www.dnsbelgium.be/en/knowledge/statistics live https://web.archive.org/web/20221210182856/https://www.dnsbelgium.be/en/knowledge/statistics 2022-12-10 2022-12-10 DNS Belgium Entities connected with Belgium Very popular in Belgium; also used by YouTube for URL shortening None Names can be registered directly at second level; some third-level names under categories such as ac.be for academic institutions also exist Documents ADR www.dnsbelgium.be Yes .be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium. In November 2022, there were 1,746,459 registered domain names using it. History The domain became active in 1989 and was administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 2000, the control of the TLD was transferred to DNS Belgium.March 2026 It was announced in November 2005 that the initial registration of domains would be free until the beginning of 2006, though with some limits on the number any individual was allowed to register..be Advertising CampaignDNS BE rounds out successful recruitment campaign by clocking up its one millionth domain name This was remarkably popular, with some 17,000 registrations coming in on the first day of the promotion.March 2026 Registration Any .be registration has to be ordered via a registered agent. Domain names are registered directly at second level. BELNET, the federal internet provider for scientific institutions, manages the .ac.be subdomain reserved for academic entities, with a policy of allowing only one active .ac.be domain per institution.March 2026 Because of this, most universities abandoned their .ac.be SLD as primary domain. This is why ucl.ac.be shifted to uclouvain.be, fundp.ac.be to unamur.be, ulg.ac.be to uliege.be or fusl.ac.be to usaintlouis.be when changing names.March 2026 The University of Mons-Hainaut, by merging with the Faculté polytechnique de Mons (fpms.ac.be) into a new legal entity called the University of Mons, could change its domain from umh.ac.be to umons.ac.be.March 2026 Regional variants The Flemish separatist party Vlaams Belang introduced a draft resolution in the Parliament of the region of Flanders demanding the creation of a Flemish top level domain .vl (for nl Vlaanderen, Flanders in Flemish).Vlaams Belang wil 'B' vervangen door 'VL' op autonummerplaten, landspostcode, internetextentie en burgerluchtvaartuigen However, this resolution failed to receive support of the region's other parties. Only recognized UN member states are eligible for a two-letter domain extension.Postel Jon March 1994 IANA RFC http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1591 In October 2008, the Flemish government expressed its intention to obtain a three-letter domain code for Flanders, like .vla, .vln or .fla. In 2014, .vlaanderen and .brussels were added, also administered by DNSBelgium. The domain has also been in use as a logo for the federal government since 2003.Logo http://logo.fgov.be/ fr 2014-05-31 https://web.archive.org/web/20140516190344/http://logo.fgov.be/ 2014-05-16 dead Other uses YouTube uses the domain hack youtu.be for their URL shortening service.Kincaid Jason 2009-12-22 YouTube Gets Its Own Short URLs. Except They're Still Pretty Long. https://techcrunch.com/2009/12/21/youtube-url-shortener/ 2025-12-12 TechCrunch en-US References External links IANA .be whois information List of .be registered agents Category:Internet in Belgium Category:Mass media in Belgium Category:Country code top-level domains Category:Council of European National Top Level Domain Registries members Category:Internet properties established in 1988 sv:Toppdomän#B