Overview
- The .me registry applied a serverHold to t.me on July 13, 2026, and RDAP/WHOIS records show the status change was logged at 19:24:55 UTC, which removed the domain from global DNS and stopped all t.me web links from resolving.
- Telegram’s apps and the main telegram.org site continue to operate normally, but browser-based t.me links used for channel pages, group invites and bot endpoints now return no result and cannot be reached from the web.
- Pavel Durov publicly tagged the .me registry on X asking them to investigate the outage and neither Telegram, the .me registry, GoDaddy nor Montenegrin authorities have issued an official explanation.
- Observers noted a same-day OFAC Specially Designated Nationals notice that referenced a t.me URL, but there is no confirmed causal link tying that notice to the registry-level serverHold.
- Registry-level serverHold actions are rare and normally imply a legal, enforcement, or policy pressure on the registry, so the outage risks wider disruption to onboarding, community bots and crypto projects that rely on t.me links.