Kiribati is generally the first country to enter the New Year because its Line Islands use UTC+14, the world’s furthest-forward time zone.
The key location is Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, in Kiribati’s Line Islands. The country moved the International Date Line eastward around its islands in 1994, allowing all of Kiribati to share the same calendar date. That change made the Line Islands the first inhabited places to reach a new date.
This distinction is about the first national territory or inhabited locality to experience midnight, not the first large city or capital. Kiribati is spread across three island groups in the central Pacific, so its islands occupy several time zones even though the country uses a coordinated calendar system.
Samoa and Tonga also celebrate very early, while New Zealand follows them. The exact order can vary in public descriptions because daylight-saving changes and the difference between a country and its individual islands can affect comparisons.