.be

Overview

• .be is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belgium.
• Introduced/added to the DNS root zone on 5 August 1988 and became active in 1989.
• Managed and sponsored by DNS Belgium (dns.be / DNS Belgium vzw/asbl).
• As of 2022-12-10 there were 1,746,459 registered .be domain names.
• DNSSEC is supported.
• Structure: registrations are allowed directly at the second level; a few third-level namespaces (for example ac.be) exist for specific categories.

History

• 1988: .be was added to the root zone (delegation date noted as 5 August 1988).
• 1989: the domain became active and was initially administrated by Pierre Verbaeten of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven).
• February 1999: the not-for-profit organisation dns.be was founded to take over management.
• January 2000: operational control was transferred from KU Leuven to DNS Belgium.
• November 2005–early 2006: DNS Belgium ran a promotion offering free initial registrations (with per-person limits); about 17,000 registrations occurred on the first day of the campaign.
• Regional/related developments: proposals for a Flemish two-letter ccTLD (.vl) failed; later regional TLDs such as .vlaanderen and .brussels were created and are also administered by DNS Belgium (added in 2014).

Usage and Audience

• Primary audience: entities connected with Belgium; .be is very popular domestically.
• Common uses:
  • National businesses, organizations and individuals in Belgium.
  • Academic use via the ac.be third-level domain, managed by BELNET for scientific and academic institutions (policy allows one active .ac.be domain per institution).
  • Branding and services: used as a domain hack (notably YouTube's URL shortener youtu.be).
• Many Belgian universities and institutions migrated from third-level ac.be names to second-level .be domains when rebranding or reorganizing.

Registration Rules

• Registrations must be ordered via a registered agent (a list of .be registered agents is maintained by DNS Belgium).
• Names are registered at the second level; certain third-level names exist for categories (for example ac.be for academic entities, managed by BELNET).
• Infobox status: restrictions listed as "None"; however, DNS Belgium enforces terms and conditions and will not accept names that are already registered, in quarantine, withdrawn, or blocked by court order or injunction.
• Registrant warranties (summary of DNS Belgium terms): registrants must provide complete and accurate contact data, must not infringe third-party rights, must not register names for unlawful purposes, must not use names contrary to public order or morality, and must not shield their real identity via false contact data.

Characters and length rules (as stated by DNS Belgium):

• For non-IDN (ASCII) names:

  • Must be between 2 and 63 characters.
  • Allowed characters: a–z, 0–9 and hyphen (-).
  • Cannot start or end with a hyphen.
  • Cannot have a hyphen in both the third and fourth positions (i.e., no "-" at positions 3 and 4).

• For Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs):

  • The U-label must consist of at least 2 characters; A-label and/or U-label cannot exceed 63 characters.
  • U-label cannot start or end with a hyphen.
  • U-label cannot contain a hyphen at both the third and fourth positions.
  • Allowed characters include a–z, 0–9, hyphen and a specified set of accented/extended characters (e.g., ß, á, à, â, ã, ä, å, æ, ç, é, è, ê, ë, etc.) and the sequence "oe".

• Dispute policy: DNS Belgium provides an ADR (alternative dispute resolution) procedure for domain-name disputes.

SEO and Brand Impact

• .be is widely used and trusted within Belgium due to its status as the national ccTLD and high domestic adoption.
• DNSSEC support adds to technical trust and security for .be domains.
• The TLD is used for branding purposes (example: the Belgian federal government has used ".be" as part of its logo since 2003).
• .be can be used creatively as a domain hack (notably by global services such as YouTube), which can aid memorable short URLs and branding.

Notable Cases or Examples

• youtu.be — YouTube's URL shortening/domain-hack service uses the .be TLD (youtu.be).
• Academic migration examples: several Belgian universities moved from third-level ac.be names to second-level .be domains when changing names or reorganizing (examples include ucl.ac.be → uclouvain.be, fundp.ac.be → unamur.be, ulg.ac.be → uliege.be).

% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

domain:       BE

organisation: DNS Belgium vzw/asbl
address:      Engels Plein 35, bus 01.01
address:      Leuven 3000
address:      Belgium

contact:      administrative
name:         CEO
organisation: DNS Belgium vzw/asbl
address:      Engels Plein 35, bus 01.01
address:      Leuven 3000
address:      Belgium
phone:        +32 16 28 49 70
fax-no:       +32 16 28 49 71
e-mail:       iana-admin@dnsbelgium.be

contact:      technical
name:         CTO
organisation: DNS Belgium vzw/asbl
address:      Engels Plein 35, bus 01.01
address:      Leuven 3000
address:      Belgium
phone:        +32 16 28 49 70
fax-no:       +32 16 28 49 71
e-mail:       iana-tech@dnsbelgium.be

nserver:      A.NSSET.BE 194.0.6.1 2001:678:9:0:0:0:0:1
nserver:      B.NSSET.BE 194.0.37.1 2001:678:64:0:0:0:0:1
nserver:      C.NSSET.BE 194.0.43.1 2001:678:68:0:0:0:0:1
nserver:      D.NSSET.BE 194.0.44.1 2001:678:6c:0:0:0:0:1
nserver:      Y.NSSET.BE 120.29.253.8 2001:dcd:7:0:0:0:0:8
nserver:      Z.NSSET.BE 194.0.25.36 2001:678:20:0:0:0:0:36
ds-rdata:     52756 8 2 5485ac33dd7c7ed237ea2a4bd269731c816960fe181042024484b5ceca6ecc9f

whois:        whois.dns.be

status:       ACTIVE
remarks:      Registration information: https://www.dnsbelgium.be

created:      1988-08-05
changed:      2025-06-05
source:       IANA