Kiribati celebrates New Year's Eve in the UTC+14 time zone, making its Line Islands among the first inhabited places to reach midnight.
Kiribati is an island country spread across a large area of the central Pacific. Its Line Islands, including Kiritimati, use Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14. The country moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1995 so its islands would share the same calendar date.
Kiritimati is often described in media as one of the first inhabited places to welcome a new year. The phrase refers specifically to its time zone and inhabited location, not to every island of Kiribati. Samoa and Tonga are also early Pacific celebrants, but they use different time zones, so they are not the precise answer to this question.