Kiribati celebrates New Year's Eve with the first major midnight fireworks in the Kiritimati time zone.
Kiribati is an island nation in the central Pacific, and its Line Islands use UTC+14, the world’s most advanced standard time zone. As a result, Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, is among the first inhabited places to enter a new calendar year.
The International Date Line was moved east of Kiribati’s Line Islands in 1995. That change placed all of Kiribati’s islands on the same calendar date, ending the country’s former situation in which its islands could be separated by a full day.
Kiribati is often described as the first country to welcome the New Year, but the precise claim depends on whether one means the first national territory, inhabited settlement, or organized celebration. Kiritimati’s time zone is the key fact behind the widely reported early celebrations.