Kiritimati, part of Kiribati, is among the first inhabited places to enter each New Year.
Kiritimati is also called Christmas Island and lies in the central Pacific Ocean. It uses Kiribati’s Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14, the world’s furthest-forward civil time zone. As a result, its midnight arrives before midnight in most other inhabited locations.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1994. The change placed the Phoenix and Line island groups on the same calendar day as the Gilbert Islands, ending a situation in which different parts of the country could be on different dates.
Kiritimati is not the only land in the UTC+14 zone, and saying it is always the absolute first place can oversimplify the geography of time zones. It is nevertheless one of the earliest inhabited places to celebrate the new year and is commonly cited in global New Year coverage.