Kiribati is traditionally credited with being the first major island nation to enter each New Year.
The reason is its Line Islands, including Kiritimati, which use UTC+14, the world’s most advanced civil time offset. When midnight arrives there, the date is already ahead of most of the inhabited world. This makes Kiritimati a frequent focus of international New Year coverage.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1994, aligning the country’s scattered islands on the same calendar date. Before that change, parts of Kiribati were separated by a date difference of nearly a full day, complicating government and national life.
The claim needs careful wording: “first” depends on the time-zone system and which inhabited place is being compared. Kiribati is the country most commonly named in this context, while nearby Pacific nations such as Tonga and Samoa also enter the new year very early.