UNESCO and ICANN to celebrate Universal Acceptance Day

In 2026, 30 UA Day events will take place between 25 March and 30 May, providing a two-month global window for countries, organizations and communities to reinforce UA through awareness-raising and capacity-building activities.

This UNESCO-ICANN partnership reflects a shared commitment to ensuring that all valid domain names and email addresses-regardless of language, script or length-function properly across digital platforms and services worldwide.

Following the Call for Proposals to host UA Day Events, 30 events were carefully shortlisted and selected among 71 submissions from Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East, ensuring thematic diversity and linguistic inclusion. These initiatives involve a variety of partners, including government, technical organizations, civil society groups, academia and local communities. The selected events cover activities in four major areas:

• Technical capacity-building,

• Policy dialogue and awareness-raising,

• Community engagement,

• Promotion of Indigenous and local languages in the digital space.

UA Day 2026 marks the fourth consecutive year of collaboration between UNESCO and ICANN on this flagship initiative. In the last year edition, 59 events and one main UA Day event took place, reflecting the growing global awareness of Universal Acceptance and the critical need to ensure that digital transformation benefits all linguistic communities.

UNESCO calls on Member States and all relevant stakeholders to actively engage in these events, participate in awareness-raising and capacity-building activities, and contribute to a truly inclusive digital environment that leaves no language behind.

Universal Acceptance is essential for enabling people to use the internet in their own languages and scripts, including Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) and multilingual email addresses. However, many digital systems remain incompatible with non-Latin scripts, creating barriers for users, particularly speakers of Indigenous and low-resourced languages. Addressing these challenges is critical to ensuring equitable access to information and meaningful participation in the digital space.