Kiribati is the island nation home to Kiritimati, often among the first inhabited places to enter a new year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, belongs to Kiribati in the central Pacific Ocean. It lies in the Line Islands, which use UTC+14, the world's most advanced civil time zone. As a result, the island reaches midnight before most other inhabited locations.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1994, aligning the Line Islands on the same calendar day as the rest of the country. That change helped end the unusual situation in which different Kiribati islands were separated by a date boundary.
“First” claims can depend on whether an answer refers to a country, island, settlement, or uninhabited land. Kiritimati is commonly highlighted because it is inhabited and associated with the UTC+14 zone. It is not the same place as Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, which belongs to Australia.