Kiribati became the first country to enter 2000 during the global Millennium celebrations.
Kiribati is an island country spread across the central Pacific, and its Line Islands include Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island. In 1994, Kiribati adjusted its time-zone arrangement so that its widely separated islands would share the same calendar date. This placed the Line Islands on the world's earliest civil time zone, UTC+14.
As a result, Kiritimati was among the first inhabited places to welcome January 1, 2000. International media focused on the islands during the Millennium celebrations, turning the remote Pacific location into a symbol of the new century's arrival.
The answer is sometimes confused with Samoa or Tonga, both Pacific nations that have also been associated with being early to celebrate New Year. Time-zone rules and date-line arrangements have changed, and “first” can depend on whether one means a country, an inhabited island, or a particular territory. For the 2000 celebrations, Kiribati was the standard country-level answer.