As the world prepares to say goodbye to 2025, the first moments of 2026 will be celebrated across the globe in a continuous wave of festivities, dictated by the International Date Line.
The tiny Pacific island nations of Kiribati, particularly the Line Islands, and Samoa will be the first to ring in the New Year at 10:00 GMT on December 31st. They will kick off the global celebrations, quickly followed by New Zealand and major eastern Australian cities, including Sydney, where the fireworks will light up the sky.
The celebrations will then move across Asia, with Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing ushering in 2026 hours later. Europe will join the festivities next, with iconic cities like London, Paris, and Berlin marking the transition at midnight local time.
The party will then reach the Americas, where major cities like New York, Toronto, and Buenos Aires will ring in the New Year as the first day of 2026 begins to unfold in the Pacific. The last places to celebrate the New Year will be the uninhabited islands of Baker Island and Howland Island in the central Pacific, U.S. territories.
For inhabited territories, the last to celebrate will be American Samoa, Niue, and the Midway Islands. These places will greet the New Year nearly 25 hours after Kiribati’s initial celebration, marking the final moments of the global countdown.
