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Press Release: ICANN83 Policy Forum Set for Prague Amid Key Milestones

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Prague – 28 May 2025 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is pleased to announce that the ICANN83 Policy Forum will take place 9–12 June 2025 in Prague, Czech Republic. The meeting comes at a critical time in Internet governance, as the global Internet community prepares for the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society outcomes (WSIS+20), a process that will assess progress on digital development goals and revisit how the Internet is governed, including the continued relevance of the multistakeholder model.

ICANN83 will bring together participants from governments, civil society, the private sector, and the technical community to work on important policy issues affecting the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Internet's unique identifier systems at the Prague Congress Center. Discussions will focus on technical coordination, the evolving DNS landscape, and critical topics such as Universal Acceptance, DNS Abuse, the New gTLD Program: Next Round, and the broader implications of digital policy decisions taking shape around the world.

"At a time when the Internet's future is being debated on global stages, ICANN83 is where practical solutions and policy come together," said Kurtis Lindqvist, ICANN President and CEO. "This meeting gives the community a chance to make real progress on the decisions that shape how the Internet functions and how people around the world access it."

This year's Policy Forum also emphasizes broad participation for both seasoned stakeholders and new participants. The format is designed to support working sessions, cross-community dialogue, and open engagement, whether attendees are joining in person or remotely.

ICANN83 is being organized with the support of CZ.NIC, the registry operator for the .cz country code top-level domain and a longtime contributor to Internet policy and infrastructure development in the region.

"We're pleased to welcome the ICANN community back to Prague, and to support the ongoing work that keeps the Internet stable, secure, and globally connected," said Ondřej Filip, CEO of CZ.NIC. "We value the chance to contribute to the conversations shaping the Internet's next chapter."

ICANN Public Meetings are free and open to anyone interested in the coordination of the Internet's unique identifiers. Registration for in-person participation is open through 8 June 2025, and remote participation is also available.

Visit the ICANN83 website for more information and to view the meeting schedule.

About ICANN

ICANN's mission is to help ensure a stable, secure, and unified global Internet. To reach another person on the Internet, you need to type an address – a name or a number – into your computer or other device. That address must be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate and support these unique identifiers across the world. ICANN was formed in 1998 as a nonprofit public benefit corporation with a community of participants from all over the world.

Media Contact

Luna Madi
Senior Director, Global Communications, EMEA
Istanbul
Mobile: +90 (533) 031 35 05
Email: luna.madi@icann.org
or press@icann.org

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."