Kiribati is often among the first countries to enter the New Year because parts of it use UTC+14.
Kiribati is an island country spread across a vast area of the central Pacific Ocean. Its Line Islands, including Kiritimati, use Line Islands Time, which is UTC+14, the world's most advanced standard time zone. As a result, those islands reach midnight before most other inhabited places on Earth.
Kiribati moved the International Date Line eastward around its territory in 1994, aligning its scattered islands on the same calendar date. Kiritimati is consequently often highlighted in news coverage of the first New Year celebrations. The wording “first country” can be misleading because different islands and territories observe different local times; Kiribati is best understood as a country whose eastern islands are among the first inhabited places to begin the new year.