Domain endings / .co
A .co expires on its renewal date.
Then up to 45 days to renew, 30 days to restore, and 5 days before it's free.
The .co registry renews an unpaid domain for a year at expiry by default, then gives your registrar 45 days to decide. A deleted .co can be restored for 30 days, then sits five more days before it's purged.
When does a .co domain expire?
A .co expires on the expiry date in the registry record. By default the registry then renews it for one year and bills your registrar; a registrar can instead have unrenewed names deleted at expiry.
Either way, your registrar decides under its own terms whether you keep it.
Is there a grace period for .co?
Usually, but how long is up to your registrar. The registry gives the registrar 45 days after the automatic renewal to delete the name for a refund. When the site stops working in that time is also the registrar's choice; the registry only takes the name out of the zone once it is deleted.
What happens when a .co domain expires?
These stages come from the .CO registry's registrar operations manual of January 2026.
- Auto-renew graceautoRenewPeriodUp to 45 days, set by the registrar
- The registry has renewed the domain automatically. You can still renew through your registrar until it deletes the name.
- RedemptionredemptionPeriod30 days
- Deleted and out of the .co zone, so the site and email stop. The registrar can restore it for a restore fee plus a renewal of at least a year.
- Pending deletependingDelete5 days
- It can no longer be restored.
- Released
- The name is purged and anyone can register it. Purges run through the day, a minute or two after each name's hold ends, not in one daily batch.
How long can you register a .co domain for?
From 1 to 5 years, not 10 as for .com. A renewal can't take the term past 5 years.
How do I look up a .co domain's expiry date?
Ask the registry's WHOIS server, whois.registry.co, or type the name in the box above and nmspc asks the same server for you. IANA's RDAP bootstrap file lists no RDAP server for .co (checked 25 October 2026), so nmspc reads .co from WHOIS, and switches to RDAP on its own if IANA adds one.
What else is different about .co?
Under the registry's Expired Domain Policy, an expired .co must run through this lifecycle; a registrar can't hand it to someone else on the way.
The Colombian endings gov.co, edu.co, mil.co and org.co are only sold through the local portal registrocolombia.co.
Who runs .co?
Consorcio Equipo PuntoCo runs .co, Colombia's country code, under licence from Colombia's Ministry of ICT; CentralNic has run its technical backend since October 2025. You register and renew a .co through a registrar.
How nmspc keeps track
Add a .co domain and nmspc reads its expiry date from the registry, then reminds you 60, 30, 14, 7 and 1 day before it runs out, and before its certificate does. Free for every domain. Open nmspc
Sources
- .CO Registry: registrar operations manual (January 2026)
- .CO Registry: Expired Domain Policy
- .CO Registry: registration policies
- IANA root zone database: .co
- IANA: RDAP bootstrap file for domains
Checked against these pages on 25 October 2026. Registries change their rules now and then; the source wins if it disagrees.