New Years Celebrations Around the World
When the ball drops in New York City’s Times Square to herald the start of 2025, it’ll actually be late to the party as dozens of countries around the world will already have welcomed the new year.
Kiribati is an island country in the central Pacific Ocean, and its largest island, Kiritimati, was the first place to kick off 2025 when it was just 5 a.m. on December 31 on the East Coast of the United States and 11 a.m. UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, the global standard).
The Pacific Island nation was followed by Chatham Islands in New Zealand at 5:15 a.m. ET and then most of New Zealand celebrated at 6 a.m., along with Tokelau, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati’s Phoenix Islands and some regions of Antarctica.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the international date line, Hawaii, American Samoa, and many of the US outlying islands will be among the last places to pop Champagne corks. They’ll have to wait until Wednesday morning (Eastern Time) to toast 2025.
In all, there are 39 different local time zones in use across the globe – some differing by 15 or 30 minutes compared to nearby zones – including two that are more than 12 hours ahead of UTC, which means it takes 26 hours for the entire world to welcome the New Year.
