New Year in every time zone: 37 offsets, first to last
Updated
Midnight on 1 January does not arrive once. Counting every named zone in the IANA time-zone database, the world's clocks reach New Year at 37 different offsets from UTC, spread over 25 hours — 26 if you count two uninhabited islands.
| Offset | Midnight, in UTC | Zones | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| UTC+14 | 31 Dec, 10:00 | 1 | Kiritimati (Line Islands, Kiribati) |
| UTC+13:45 | 31 Dec, 10:15 | 1 | Chatham Islands |
| UTC+13 | 31 Dec, 11:00 | 6 | Auckland, Samoa, Tonga, Tokelau |
| UTC+12 | 31 Dec, 12:00 | 11 | Fiji, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Kamchatka |
| UTC+11 | 31 Dec, 13:00 | 14 | Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Solomon Islands |
| UTC+10:30 | 31 Dec, 13:30 | 2 | Adelaide, Broken Hill |
| UTC+10 | 31 Dec, 14:00 | 9 | Brisbane, Vladivostok, Guam, Port Moresby |
| UTC+9:30 | 31 Dec, 14:30 | 1 | Darwin |
| UTC+9 | 31 Dec, 15:00 | 9 | Tokyo, Seoul, Yakutsk, Palau |
| UTC+8:45 | 31 Dec, 15:15 | 1 | Eucla (unofficial) |
| UTC+8 | 31 Dec, 16:00 | 14 | Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Perth |
| UTC+7 | 31 Dec, 17:00 | 14 | Bangkok, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City |
| UTC+6:30 | 31 Dec, 17:30 | 2 | Myanmar, Cocos Islands |
| UTC+6 | 31 Dec, 18:00 | 6 | Dhaka, Bishkek, Omsk, Thimphu |
| UTC+5:45 | 31 Dec, 18:15 | 1 | Nepal |
| UTC+5:30 | 31 Dec, 18:30 | 2 | India, Sri Lanka |
| UTC+5 | 31 Dec, 19:00 | 17 | Karachi, Tashkent, Yekaterinburg, Maldives |
| UTC+4:30 | 31 Dec, 19:30 | 1 | Kabul |
| UTC+4 | 31 Dec, 20:00 | 12 | Dubai, Baku, Tbilisi, Mauritius |
| UTC+3:30 | 31 Dec, 20:30 | 1 | Tehran |
| UTC+3 | 31 Dec, 21:00 | 25 | Moscow, Istanbul, Riyadh, Nairobi |
| UTC+2 | 31 Dec, 22:00 | 33 | Cairo, Johannesburg, Athens, Kyiv |
| UTC+1 | 31 Dec, 23:00 | 46 | Berlin, Paris, Rome, Lagos, Kinshasa |
| UTC | 1 Jan, 00:00 | 29 | London, Dublin, Lisbon, Accra, Casablanca |
| UTC−1 | 1 Jan, 01:00 | 2 | Azores, Cape Verde |
| UTC−2 | 1 Jan, 02:00 | 4 | Nuuk, Fernando de Noronha, South Georgia |
| UTC−3 | 1 Jan, 03:00 | 31 | Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Santiago, Montevideo |
| UTC−3:30 | 1 Jan, 03:30 | 1 | St. John's, Newfoundland |
| UTC−4 | 1 Jan, 04:00 | 37 | Halifax, Caracas, Puerto Rico, La Paz |
| UTC−5 | 1 Jan, 05:00 | 27 | New York, Toronto, Bogotá, Lima |
| UTC−6 | 1 Jan, 06:00 | 28 | Chicago, Mexico City, Winnipeg, Edmonton |
| UTC−7 | 1 Jan, 07:00 | 13 | Denver, Phoenix, Vancouver, Whitehorse |
| UTC−8 | 1 Jan, 08:00 | 3 | Los Angeles, Tijuana, Pitcairn |
| UTC−9 | 1 Jan, 09:00 | 7 | Anchorage, Gambier Islands |
| UTC−9:30 | 1 Jan, 09:30 | 1 | Marquesas Islands |
| UTC−10 | 1 Jan, 10:00 | 4 | Honolulu, Tahiti, Rarotonga |
| UTC−11 | 1 Jan, 11:00 | 3 | Pago Pago (American Samoa), Niue, Midway |
"Zones" counts the 418 named zones the database exposes through the JavaScript Intl API, plus UTC itself: 419 in all. Many are one country's cities or islands under a single rule, so the count says how many separately maintained clocks share an offset, not how many people do.
First and last
The first midnight is Kiritimati's, at 10:00 UTC on 31 December. The last inhabited midnight in the table is at UTC−11, in American Samoa, Niue and Midway, at 11:00 UTC on 1 January — 25 hours later. Baker and Howland Islands, two uninhabited US nature reserves, keep UTC−12 and are the last to enter a new year, at 12:00 UTC; no named zone in the database uses that offset. Why the line falls there is in where New Year arrives first and last.
Not only whole hours
Eleven of the 37 offsets are not whole hours: Chatham Islands at UTC+13:45, Adelaide at +10:30, Darwin at +9:30, Eucla at +8:45, Myanmar at +6:30, Nepal at +5:45, India and Sri Lanka at +5:30, Afghanistan at +4:30, Iran at +3:30, Newfoundland at −3:30 and the Marquesas at −9:30. Eucla's +8:45 is used unofficially by a handful of towns on the Eyre Highway. More in half-hour and quarter-hour time zones.
Summer in the south
New Year falls in the southern summer, so several of the earliest midnights are on summer time. Auckland is at UTC+13 instead of +12, Sydney and Hobart at +11 instead of +10, Adelaide at +10:30 instead of +9:30, the Chatham Islands at +13:45 instead of +12:45 and Santiago at −3 instead of −4. Lord Howe Island moves by only half an hour, from +10:30 to +11. Samoa and São Paulo are on the same offset at New Year as in July. See daylight saving time.
The busiest hour
More zones reach midnight at 23:00 UTC than at any other moment: 46 zones on UTC+1, most of continental Europe from Madrid to Warsaw and west-central Africa from Lagos to Kinshasa.
When the rules change
The table follows the rules now in force. In 2026 four changes moved a New Year midnight: British Columbia stays on UTC−7 year-round, Alberta and the Northwest Territories stay on UTC−6, and Morocco returns to UTC from 20 September 2026. The board reads these rules from your browser, so a browser whose time-zone data predates a change counts down to the old midnight in that zone until it is updated.
Sources
- Time Zone Database — IANA (what the database contains; release 2026d, 11 September 2026)
- tzdb NEWS — IANA (2026b British Columbia, 2026c Alberta and Morocco, 2026d Northwest Territories)
- UTC−12:00 — Wikipedia (Baker and Howland Islands, uninhabited, last to enter a New Year)
- Time in Australia — Wikipedia (Lord Howe Island's half-hour shift, Eucla's unofficial UTC+8:45)
- Offsets, counts and midnight instants computed on 19 September 2026 with the JavaScript Intl API (Node 25.8.2, tz 2026a, 418 zones plus UTC) for New Year 2027 and 2028, with the 2026b–2026d changes applied