The ICANN Studienkreis is organised by Medienstadt Leipzig e.V. / Netcom Institute a NGO recognised At Large Structure under ICANN Bylaws. Established in 1999, the ICANN Studienkreis organizes annual high level expert seminars on subjects, related to Internet Governance and the development of ICANN.

Originally the ICANN Studienkreis emerged as a network of the German speaking Internet community and was mainly supported by the three German speaking ccTLD registries: DENIC for .de, SWITCH for .ch and .li and nic.at for .at. Later the ICANN Studienkreis became internationalized and worked together with partners from the global gTLD communitypo