Which Pacific island group reaches January 1 first because it uses UTC+14?

The Line Islands reach January 1 first among inhabited places because they use UTC+14.

The Line Islands are a group of islands in the central Pacific Ocean belonging mainly to Kiribati. Their most famous inhabited island is Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island. UTC+14 is the world’s most advanced standard time zone, so the islands enter a new calendar day before locations farther west.

Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1994 and 1995. The change brought the country’s widely separated islands onto the same calendar date, allowing the nation to celebrate a single New Year’s Day rather than having different parts of the country on different dates.

The Line Islands are often described as the first inhabited territory to welcome the New Year. This is a time-zone distinction, not a claim that every island in the group has the same population or celebration style.