.ax

.ax is the ccTLD for Åland Islands, an autonomous region of Finland.

Previously, most Åland websites were hosted under the .aland.fi subdomain.

On 17 February 2006, the Finnish Parliament approved an amendment to the national domain name laws to include the .ax top-level domain. During a three-year transition period, .aland.fi was gradually phased out while .ax was introduced in parallel. No new registrations were accepted under .aland.fi, and all existing domain holders received corresponding .ax domain names.

On 17 March 2006, Finnish president Tarja Halonen signed the bill into law, which took effect on 27 March 2006. The Government of Åland began accepting .ax registrations immediately after the law came into force.

On 9 June 2006, ICANN approved the delegation of the .ax top-level domain to the Government of Åland. The domain was added to the root zone on 21 June 2006 and became active on 15 August 2006.

The code AX originates from the ISO 3166 standard and was assigned to Åland in 2004. The letter "X" does not appear in any major or local language, but other possible two-letter combinations were already taken, such as .al for Albania, .ad for Andorra, and .an for the Netherlands Antilles.

Since 5 September 2016, anyone worldwide has been allowed to register domain names under the .ax top-level domain. All companies can register through whois.ax and, after approval, are permitted to sell .ax domain names at the official registry price of €20. Domain transfers are free of charge. There's no support for IDN and EPP, but there is support for DNSSEC.