Which country celebrates New Year first?
Kiribati — and the celebrations run for twenty-five hours before the last inhabited place gets there, which is longer than a day.
The short answer
Kiritimati (Christmas Island), Kiribati, at UTC+14. Also Samoa and Tonga at UTC+13, an hour later.
The last inhabited places — Niue and American Samoa at UTC−11 — reach midnight 25 hours after Kiribati.
The order
| Order | Place | Offset |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Kiritimati, Kiribati | UTC+14 |
| 2nd | Samoa, Tonga, Chatham* | UTC+13 |
| 3rd | Auckland, Fiji | UTC+12 |
| … | Sydney | UTC+11 (summer) |
| … | Tokyo | UTC+9 |
| … | Delhi | UTC+5:30 |
| … | London | UTC+0 |
| … | New York | UTC−5 |
| … | Los Angeles | UTC−8 |
| Last | Niue, American Samoa | UTC−11 |
*Chatham Islands are at UTC+12:45 in the southern summer, so they arrive 45 minutes after the UTC+13 group.
Why 25 hours and not 24
Because civil offsets run from UTC−11 (inhabited) to UTC+14, not from −12 to +12.
Kiribati created UTC+14 in 1995. Its territory straddled the date line, splitting the country permanently across two calendar dates, so it moved its eastern islands to the western side of the line. That produced the world's furthest-ahead offset — and made Kiritimati the first place on earth into every new year.
Samoa did something similar in 2011, skipping 30 December entirely to move from UTC−11 to UTC+13 and align its working week with Australia and New Zealand rather than the United States.
Counting uninhabited territory, the full span is 26 hours, since some US minor outlying islands sit at UTC−12.
The neighbours a day apart
The most striking consequence: Samoa and American Samoa are about 100 km apart, an hour apart on the clock, and a full calendar day apart.
When Samoa is celebrating the new year, American Samoa has 24 hours still to wait. You could in principle celebrate twice with a short flight — which is exactly the sort of thing the tourism boards mention.
Sydney gets the attention anyway
Despite being several hours behind Kiribati, Sydney's harbour fireworks are usually the first major broadcast celebration, because Kiribati and Samoa have small populations and limited broadcast infrastructure.
So "first into the new year" and "first celebration anyone watches" are different questions with different answers.
Related: The international date line · UTC offsets: the full list
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Figures on this page are computed from the IANA time zone database. Last generated 2026-08-18.