14.07.2026
4 min
39
Telegram’s official short-link domain, t.me, went offline overnight, preventing users from sharing links or accessing certain services. The domain was suspended without explanation by the registry, the highest authority responsible for Montenegro’s .me top-level domain.
The t.me domain was placed under serverHold status on July 13 at 19:24:55 UTC and remained unavailable for several hours. This status prevents DNS servers from resolving the domain, effectively making it unreachable across the internet.
The domain is deeply integrated into Telegram and is used for sharing usernames, public channels, groups, bots, invitation links, TON cryptocurrency wallets, Mini Apps, and other services. For millions of users, it serves as the primary gateway to discover content and connect with others on the platform.
Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder and CEO, appeared unable to resolve the issue internally and reached out directly to the registry on X for assistance.
“Hi @domainME, http://t.me links stopped working. Can you look into it?” he wrote.
The .me domain is Montenegro’s country-code top-level domain, but it is widely used by international brands, blogs, and other organizations. There are no known restrictions on registering .me domains.
The suspension of t.me was imposed by the registry itself, doMEn d.o.o. (domain.me). According to GoDaddy, which serves as the registrar for t.me, the .me registry infrastructure is operated by Identity Digital, a Washington-based company that manages what it describes as “the world’s largest portfolio of new top-level domains.”
Additional WHOIS records indicate that the domain appears to be properly configured. It remains registered through 2035, ruling out expiration as the cause, and its nameservers are correctly configured to use Google Cloud DNS. Telegram’s core messaging services, including chats and voice calls, were not affected by the outage.
Some users on X pointed out that the domain was suspended on the same day the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on a fraudulent VPN service that used a Telegram subdomain as its website (t.me/FirstVPNService). They speculated that the entire t.me domain may have been suspended by mistake.
While t.me remains unavailable, users can still access Telegram links by using an alternative domain. Simply replace “t.me” with “telegram.me” in the URL. For example, use telegram.me/durov instead of t.me/durov.
