Kiribati includes the Line Islands, where New Year arrives first because they use UTC+14.
The Line Islands are part of the Republic of Kiribati, an island country in the central Pacific Ocean. Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is the largest of the Line Islands and is often identified in world-time discussions as one of the first inhabited places to enter a new calendar year.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line for its eastern islands in 1994, aligning the country’s islands on the same calendar date. This change placed the Line Islands in the UTC+14 time zone, the most advanced standard time offset currently used.
The phrase “first country” can be misleading because New Year arrives at different times across a wide region, and the exact order depends on inhabited locations and time-zone rules. Kiribati is the country associated with the earliest official time zone, not a single island that represents every part of the nation.