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The small island in the Pacific is the first place in the world to enter 2026
In Kiritimati it is already 2026. The remote Pacific island, in the republic of Kiribati, she was the first to celebrate New Year’s Eve when it was only 11:00 in the morning in Italy. Located south of Hawaii and northeast of Australia, Kiritimati is the largest atoll in the world. Also known as Christmas Island, its just over 7 thousand inhabitants are always the first to see the light of the new day. Kiribati, which became independent from the United Kingdom in 1979, is the largest marine reserve in the South Pacific and many of its atolls are inhabited, for a total population of 116,000 people.
Sydney’s wait
Kiritimati, which is part of the Kiribati and, more generally, of the Equatorial Sporades (Line Islands in English) celebrated when it was 11am on December 31st in Italy. sydney, which has long proclaimed itself the “New Year’s Capital of the World”, waits another four hours after Christmas Island to pop the champagne and start the fireworks.
At 11pm local time (1pm in Italy), the city’s port remained silent for a minute, with the crowd keeping lights on to remember the victims of the Bondi Beach massacre. And a Jewish menorah was projected onto the pylons of the Harbor Bridge. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in his New Year’s Eve speech, acknowledged the difficulty of celebrating. The joy usually felt at the start of the new year was tempered by the sadness of the old, he said, adding that the response to the events of December 14 also showed the best of the Australian spirit, in the sense of courage and compassion.
Returning to the date line, the thing to highlight is that it proceeds a bit in a zigzag from north to south and only partially follows the 180th meridian, at the antipodes of that of Greenwich: in fact, since 1995 it has had a pronounced deviation to the east, which cuts across two time zones, incorporating, among others, not only the Kiribati archipelago, but also Samoa and Tonga. From Kiritimati, flying southwest for about 2,500 kilometers, you reach the islands of American Samoa, who will be the last to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
The many New Years of Russia
The country with the most New Years is Russia, which from the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad to the Chukotka Peninsula, which faces Alaska from the Bering Strait, extends across 11 time zones. Since the date change line passes through the Bering Strait, the Russian Chukotka and the American Alaska, despite being separated by a few kilometers of sea, celebrate 24 hours apart.
December 31, 2025 (modified December 31, 2025 | 8:18 pm)
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