UTC+14 is the civil time zone that reaches New Year's Day first each year.
UTC+14 is fourteen hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time and is used by the Line Islands of Kiribati, including Kiritimati. Because the International Date Line bends around national territories, these islands are among the first inhabited places to enter a new calendar date.
The phrase “first country” can be misleading because time-zone boundaries and inhabited locations are different questions. Kiribati’s eastern islands use UTC+14, while other parts of the country use different offsets. The country shifted the date line in 1994 so its eastern islands would share the same calendar date as the rest of Kiribati.
UTC+14 is not fourteen hours ahead of every neighboring location in a simple east-west sequence. The International Date Line is a conventional boundary, and political geography is one reason its route is irregular.