Kiribati is among the first countries to celebrate New Year’s Day because part of it uses the UTC+14 time zone.
Kiribati is an island country in the central Pacific Ocean made up of three island groups: the Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line Islands. The Line Islands, including Kiritimati, use Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14. That position places them among the earliest inhabited places to reach a new calendar date.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1994. The change brought the country’s widely separated island groups onto the same calendar day, improving coordination for government and commerce. It also made Kiritimati internationally famous for being one of the first inhabited locations to welcome a new year.
Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga also celebrate relatively early, but their time zones are not UTC+14. The exact order can depend on daylight-saving rules and political time-zone changes, so the clearest stable fact is Kiribati’s UTC+14 Line Islands region.