12 out of 16

In February I wrote that .agent has to be a community bid, and that winning Community Priority Evaluation is the only way to secure a community-by-contract TLD. The whole argument came down to whether we'd clear the scoring bar.

In the 2012 round, that bar was 14 out of 16 points. Achievable, but a genuine stretch: only five applications cleared it.

For the 2026 round, the working drafts coming out of ICANN's SubPro Implementation Review Team put the threshold at 12 out of 16. The criteria are the same four — Community Establishment, Nexus, Registration Policies, Community Endorsement — and the point budget has been redistributed across them: 6, 4, 2, and 4.

Two points easier to clear than 2012. Still a real test. Squarely within what a community that does its homework can pull off.

Where the numbers come from

The Subsequent Procedures Implementation Review Team has been publishing working drafts on ICANN's community Confluence space: SPIR, Working Documents. It's not behind a paywall. It's not in a PDF attachment nobody reads. It's a live wiki with every draft, every revision, every redline.

The CPE language sits under Topic 34 in the index. The December 2024 draft (v1) and the February 2025 draft (v2) are both publicly readable. Version 3 landed on April 14, 2025 — the most recent as I write this — and it holds the 12/16 threshold.

The IRT is an advisory body; the ICANN Board still has to adopt the final Applicant Guidebook. Things could still change. But the direction has been consistent, and the direction is the right one.

What this confirms

Everything we argued in February holds up.

The community path is not being removed from the 2026 round; it's being refined. The scoring rubric is still four criteria, so no playbook rewrite. The bar is lower than 2012, but not by much. The work still has to be done at the level of detail the scorecard demands.

The one change worth flagging: Community Establishment is now 6 points, up from 4. That's the biggest single block in the scorecard, and it's the one about organization, size, longevity, governance. The part we can most directly influence by showing up and documenting what we're doing.

What this doesn't change

Every organization that joins still matters. Every policy document still gets read by a skeptical panel. Every endorsement letter still counts for 4 full points.

If anything, the clearer the rules get, the more the race is about execution. There's less ambiguity to exploit. You either have the community, or you don't.

Where we are

The draft rules are tightening. The application window opens in about a year. We have time to do this well.

— Balazs