What is the NEXT_LOCALE cookie?
This cookie can be set using a language switcher and then when a user comes back to the site it will leverage the locale specified in the cookie when redirecting from / to the correct locale location.
Our October 2026 scan found it on 13 sites (1% of the 2,450 we scanned), set before any consent.
- Purpose
- Functional
- Belongs to
- Next
- Set as
- First-party (under the site's own domain)
- Typical lifetime
- Session (vendor says: Session)
Sites that set NEXT_LOCALE before consent
The highest-ranked 13 of 13 sites.
- grafana.com1 tracking company
- verkada.com1 tracking company
- smi2.net1 tracking company
- zalo.me1 tracking company
- ubisoft.com2 tracking companies
- profi.ru4 tracking companies
- webnovel.com4 tracking companies
- hotmart.com3 tracking companies
- elevenlabs.io3 tracking companies
- britishairways.com0 tracking companies
Show 3 more sites
- todoist.com2 tracking companies
- bible.com4 tracking companies
- kobo.com1 tracking company
How to stop it
Declining non-essential cookies in a site's consent banner should stop NEXT_LOCALE being set on later visits. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser settings stops the third-party kind everywhere, and clearing cookies for a site removes any it already set.
Description from the Open Cookie Database (Apache 2.0).
Understanding this page
- How cookie lifetimes work, and why a 13-month _ga matters
What a cookie's "expires" field actually controls, why Google Analytics ships a 2-year default that many sites cut down to 13 months, and how Safari's 7-day cap on script-set cookies changes the picture.
- First-party vs third-party cookies (and why "first-party" still tracks you)
What the distinction actually means technically, why browsers only block one of the two, and how CNAME cloaking, server-side tagging and cookies like _ga let sites keep tracking under their own domain.
- How to block or limit trackers
Browser privacy settings, content blockers, Global Privacy Control and clearing cookies compared honestly — what each one actually stops, what it doesn't, and what it costs you in return.