Kiritimati is commonly among the first inhabited places to enter a new calendar year.
Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, belongs to the Republic of Kiribati in the central Pacific. It uses Line Islands Time, UTC+14, the world’s most advanced civil time zone. As a result, the island reaches midnight and January 1 before most other inhabited locations.
The island’s position relative to the International Date Line is important. Kiribati moved the date line for its eastern islands in 1994, bringing the country’s inhabited territory onto the same calendar day. That political and time-zone change helped create the popular description of Kiribati as one of the first countries to welcome the new year.
“First” claims can depend on whether a source means a country, an inhabited island, or the first sunrise. Kiritimati is therefore a more precise answer than simply naming Kiribati, whose islands extend across a very large area of the Pacific.