EOY

Where New Year arrives first, and where it arrives last

Midnight on 1 January is not one moment. It sweeps around the planet for 26 hours, starting on a coral atoll in the central Pacific and ending on two uninhabited islands not far away.

First: Kiritimati, UTC+14

Kiritimati — Christmas Island — in the Line Islands of Kiribati keeps the world's furthest-forward time zone, UTC+14, which makes it one of the first inhabited places on Earth to reach New Year's Day. About 7,400 people live there (2020 census), on one of the largest atolls in the world by land area. The rest of the Line Islands share the zone, so Kiribati as a whole leads the world into each new day.

It was not always so. The island lies about 2,460 km east of the 180th meridian, on what would naturally be the American side of the date line. In 1995 the Republic of Kiribati realigned the International Date Line so that all of its scattered islands fall on the same calendar day, moving Kiritimati to the west of the line — and to the front of the queue for every New Year since.

Also early: Samoa, Tokelau and New Zealand

Samoa uses UTC+13 as standard time and, since ending daylight saving after 2021, no longer jumps to UTC+14 in the southern summer. Samoa arrived on this side of the line only recently: at the end of Thursday 29 December 2011 the country went straight to Saturday 31 December 2011, skipping Friday 30 December entirely, to sit on the same side of the line as its main trading partners; Tokelau made the same change at the same time. New Zealand, at UTC+13 during its summer, celebrates within the same hour.

Last: Baker and Howland Islands, UTC−12

The last places on Earth to reach New Year are two uninhabited US atolls just north of the equator, Howland Island and Baker Island, which keep UTC−12 — the earliest time on Earth, 26 hours behind Kiritimati. Nobody is there to celebrate. The last inhabited places are American Samoa and Niue, at UTC−11, 25 hours after the Line Islands. Apia in Samoa and Pago Pago in American Samoa are near neighbours in the same island group — and a full calendar day apart.

Three dates at once

Because the inhabited world spans 25 hours of offsets, for a short period every day there are three different calendar dates in force somewhere on Earth. On New Year's Eve that means the Line Islands are already in the new year while Howland Island still has more than a day of the old one left.

What it means for the countdown

The board counts to midnight in whichever zone you select, so choosing Pacific/Kiritimati shows New Year arriving first and Pacific/Pago Pago shows it arriving 25 hours later; the difference is exactly the offset between the zones. On the evening of 31 December you can watch the year end zone by zone from one page. Details of how the target is chosen are in how the countdown works.

Sources

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