Kiribati includes the Line Islands, where Kiritimati observes New Year’s Eve in UTC+14.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, lies in Kiribati’s Line Islands and uses the world’s most advanced civil time offset, UTC+14. As a result, its local calendar reaches January 1 before locations in most other time zones. This makes Kiribati a frequent subject of “first country to enter the new year” explanations.
The answer is Kiribati rather than a single city or a country with only one time zone. Kiribati spans three island groups and uses multiple offsets: the Gilbert Islands use UTC+12, the Phoenix Islands use UTC+13, and the Line Islands use UTC+14. The country’s date-line position was changed in 1995 so its eastern islands would share the same calendar date as the rest of the nation.
Samoa and Tonga are also among the earliest places to celebrate, but they do not use UTC+14. Kiritimati’s time zone is the specific geographic reason Kiribati is usually named first.