.gr

.gr is the ccTLD for Greece. It is managed by ICS-FORTH GR.

Rules and Restrictions

.gr Domain Names can be assigned to any Greek or foreign natural or legal person, whether established in Greece or not.

Domain Name Deletion

A Domain Name shall be definitively deleted when one or more of the following limitedly specified cases apply:

• if the Variable Field of a Domain Name is identical to or similar enough to create confusion with a name to which any other right already exists based on any national or community legislation, and the specific Domain Name:
  • has been registered by a holder that has no right or vested legal interest to that name; and/or
  • has been registered or is used in bad faith.
• in case the Holder has used the Domain Name in any way that runs contrary to the principles of good faith or is malicious;
• in case the Domain Name constitutes any element and/or official term of the Greek State and/or of the other States and/or international organisations and/or entities referred to in Article 6 three of the Paris Convention on Industrial Property, as well as any highly symbolic element, including in particular religious symbols and words;
• in case the specific Domain Name runs contrary to public order and good morals.

Second-level Domains

• .com.gr: for those engaging in commercial activities;
• .edu.gr: for educational organizations;
• .net.gr: for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and network providers;
• .org.gr: for non-profit organizations;
• .gov.gr: exclusively for governmental organizations.

Characters

All .gr Domain Names shall consist either:

• of Latin alphabet alphanumeric characters [i.e. Α-Ζ, a-z, 0-9] plus the special characters [-] and [.] as regards both their Variable and Non-variable Fields; or
• of Greek alphabet alphanumeric characters [i.e. Α-Ω, α-ω, 0-9] codified in PUNYCODE format as regards their Variable Field and of Latin alphabet alphanumeric characters [i.e. Α-Ζ, a-z, 0-9] as regards their Non-variable Field, plus the special characters [-] and [.].

More Information

• the special character [.] shall be used only for level separation purposes. Each level of the Domain Names shall neither start nor end with the character [-] and/or shall not include successive [-] characters;
• any Domain Names that use both Latin and Greek alphabet alphanumeric characters within the same level shall not be supported;
• no distinction shall be made between lower case or upper case Latin characters;
• the alphanumeric Greek character [ς] is different from the alphanumeric Greek character [σ];
• no distinction shall be made between lower case or upper case unpunctuated Greek characters, and lower case or upper case punctuated Greek characters;
• the Variable Field of the Domain Name consists of two (2) to sixty-three (63) characters. The [.gr] or [.ελ] end characters and the end characters of any Common Use 2nd level .gr Domain Names shall not be taken into account in the above counting;
• in the case Domain Names that consist of Greek alphabet alphanumeric characters, the number of sixty-three (63) characters shall pertain to the length of the PUNYCODE format of the Domain Name, which however may not necessarily be matching the number of characters of the Domain Name in its Greek form;
• all Domain Names shall be assigned in the lower case form declared by the Registrant in its registration declaration. The Domain Names in which the Variable Field consists of Greek characters shall be assigned in the lower case form declared by the user in its registration declaration (i.e. with any marks of accentuation, dieresis, punctuation, word- final position sigma (ς) and/or lower case sigma (σ), etc;
• the lower case unpunctuated form of the name of the Domain Names consisting of lower case Greek characters with punctuation shall be assigned to the holder without additional charge in the event that the Variable Field of the Domain Name includes the word-final position sigma (ς) the following shall be assigned to the Holder without additional charge:
  • the lower case unpunctuated form of the name with word-final position sigma (ς), wherever this existed in the initial registration form;
  • the lower case unpunctuated form of the name with lower case sigma (σ), wherever α word-final position sigma existed in the initial registration form.
• other forms of the same Domain Name, shall be automatically reserved for the Registrant but shall only be activated following the Holder’s submission of an activation declaration to the Registry, those being:
  • Domain Names resulting from a combination of the lower case unpunctuated form with punctuation marks placed at points other than those of the lower case form declared by the Registrant in his initial registration form; and/or
  • Domain Names with a word-final position sigma in the place where there was a lower case sigma in the initial registration form of the Registrant; and/or
  • Domain Names with a lower case sigma in the place where there was a word-final position sigma in the initial registration form of the Registrant.