What is DMARCbis? RFC 9989, 9990 and 9991 explained

You keep seeing “DMARCbis” mentioned in 2026 email-security posts and don't know whether it changes anything about the DMARC record you already publish.

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What this means

DMARCbis is the informal name for the IETF's refresh of the DMARC standard, now split across three published RFCs: RFC 9989 (the core specification, obsoleting the original RFC 7489), RFC 9990 (aggregate reporting) and RFC 9991 (failure reporting) — all published May 2026. The refresh folds in years of implementation experience, including the experimental RFC 9091 (public-suffix-domain DMARC), whose own info page now reads “Obsoleted by RFC 9989”. None of this requires you to change your existing v=DMARC1 record today — RFC 9989 keeps the same tag syntax your current record already uses; it mainly changes how the Organizational Domain is discovered and formalizes tags implementations already used informally. Source: RFC 9091 info page, RFC Editor — “Obsoleted by RFC 9989” · verified 2026-07-17.

What to do about it

Step 1. Nothing to change today: DMARCbis doesn't invalidate any existing v=DMARC1 record.
Step 2. Run a free check on your domain (below) to confirm your current record is valid input for either standard.
Step 3. If you built your own DMARC parser, budget time to handle senders whose receivers use RFC 9989's DNS Tree Walk instead of the old Public Suffix List method.
Step 4. Watch for a t= tag appearing in other records — it's the new testing-mode tag DMARCbis introduces (see the dedicated page below).

Frequently asked

Do I need to change my DMARC record because of DMARCbis?

No, not immediately. RFC 9989 keeps the same v=DMARC1 tag syntax your current record uses — it mainly changes how receivers discover the record (the DNS Tree Walk) and adds optional new tags like t= and np=. Nothing about your existing record becomes invalid.

Is DMARCbis a completely different standard from DMARC?

No — RFC 9989 explicitly obsoletes RFC 7489 as a refinement of the same DMARC standard, based on years of implementation experience. Aggregate and failure reporting moved into their own documents, RFC 9990 and RFC 9991, all published May 2026.

Where can I read the actual standard instead of a summary?

RFC 9989 (core), RFC 9990 (aggregate reports) and RFC 9991 (failure reports) are all published free at rfc-editor.org, no registration required.

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