Registration details
Registrants are not required to be Belgian residents or business operators to register.
As of May 2022, the registry requires additional validation from a registrant. The registrant receives an email from the registry to validate online.
The name length requirements for these domains are three to 63 characters before the TLD. The maximum registration term is one year.
| Explicit renewal | Yes |
| Domain locking available | No |
| Auto-renew date | 30 days |
| Grace period | No |
| Redemption period | 40 days |
| Authcode required | Yes |
| Contact Privacy | No |
| IDNs available | Yes |
| Registry premiums allowed | No |
| DNSSEC manageable in RCP | No |
We support the following IDN languages for this TLD:
| Dutch | French | Finnish |
| German | Norweigan | Swedish |
Renewals and registration terms
All .BE domains have a registration term of one year, and may only be renewed for one-year terms, one year at a time. There is no renewal grace period for .BE domains.
We send a deletion request to the registry 60 days before the expiry date. We remove the deletion request on renewal orders during the 60-day window. The renewal occurs at the end of the month when it would have expired.
When a domain name does not renew before expiry, it works until the end of the month, after which it goes into quarantine.
Recover domains deleted from OpenSRS and in quarantine at the registry using the standard redemption process. The new expiry date for recovered domains is one year from the reactivation date.
The domain is available to the public when not restored by the end of the quarantine period.
Leap year registrations
Domains registered on February 29 have an expiry date of February 28.
Verification process
As of November 2020, the registry performs verification of registrants' identities in case of suspicious registrations. The registry performs verification before the domain name is activated to stop potentially fraudulent registrations and to prevent domain names from causing damage.When the registry sees that the holder data is incomplete or incorrect, they temporarily delegate registrations to the name servers of DNS Belgium, so domains are registered but not yet active. The domain's URL points to a page with the details from the verification message. In the verification message, the registry asks the registrant to prove their identity. The registrant provides the registry with the required documentation to confirm. Once the registry has received and approved the proof, the domain is activated.
Registry WhoIs check
Registrants must respect the general terms and conditions of the registry agreement. One of the obligations is to provide correct data during the registration process. DNS Belgium regularly reviews WhoIs information, and when encountering questionable data, the registry emails the registrant requesting to update the WhoIs data.
Please note: The registry sees a registrant as a private individual when the organization field is blank.
The domain name is revoked and placed into quarantine within 28 days of no corrections. Registrants have 40 days after the revocation to contact the registry to update the WhoIs information and reactivate.
A new transfer order is required to obtain an activated domain in quarantine.
Registry revoke details
When the registry notices that a domain name has incorrect or incomplete registrant details, an email is sent to the registrant requesting an amendment to the wrong detail. The registrant has 14 days to amend their details.
After 14 days, the registry removes the name servers when the data is not updated. The domain name no longer resolves.
The registrant has 14 days to take action and amend their details. When the registrant modifies the details, the registry sends an email to the registrant informing them that the domain name is active. When the data is still not updated/correct, the registry revokes the domain name and puts it in quarantine.
Transfers
When attempting to transfer a .BE domain, users may experience the error "Request recognized as harmful and will not be processed." The error occurs for the following reasons:
- The authcode is invalid or incorrect.
- There are multiple transfer approval emails. Make sure to use the most recent one; each new one sent invalidates the previous ones.
- The contact information on the transfer order does not match the current contact information.
Please contact support to transfer a domain name in quarantine from OpenSRS or another registrar.
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