Say hello to 2025! Tiny Pacific island becomes first country to welcome the New Year as the world prepares to celebrate

A small island in the Pacific Ocean has welcomed the year 2025, as the rest of the world prepares to celebrate the start of a new year.

Officially known as Kiritimati, Christmas Island is home to more than 7,000 people and has the most forward time zone in the world – making it the first to enter 2025.

Tonga and New Zealand’s Chatham Islands will soon follow the island of Kiribati, while the first major cities to welcome the New Year will be Auckland and Wellington at 11am GMT.

A crowd has already gathered there and in Australia to admire the fireworks and toast champagne.

At the end of 2024, the world will say goodbye to a year that brought Olympic glory, a dramatic return of Donald Trump and unrest in the Middle East and Ukraine.

It is almost certain that 2024 will go down in history as the hottest year on record, with climate-induced disasters wreaking havoc from the plains of Europe to the Kathmandu Valley.

As New Year’s Eve celebrations kicked off on Sydney’s picturesque harbor on Tuesday afternoon, many revelers were relieved to see the past twelve months in the rear-view mirror.

“Obviously there’s a lot of war and disruption going on in different places,” insurance worker Stuart Edwards, 32, told AFP as the early crowds swelled on Sydney’s waterfront.

“It would be nice for the world if everything would repair itself, resolve itself.”

The self-proclaimed ‘New Year Capital of the World’ will shoot off nine tonnes of fireworks from the famous Opera House and Harbor Bridge at midnight.

The ‘family fireworks’ have already lit up the Opera House and Sydney Bridge, as they do every year at 9pm local time – three hours before the main show.

More than a million spectators are expected to gather along the city’s waterfront to catch a glimpse of the fireworks.

“Just to see all those beautiful colors and enjoy being with so many people in beautiful Australia,” said 71-year-old retired nurse Ruth Rowse.

In 2024, the Paris Olympics united the world for a few weeks in July and August.

Athletes swam in the Seine, raced in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower and rode horses across the manicured lawns outside the Palace of Versailles.

Taylor Swift dropped the curtain on her Eras tour this year, pygmy hippo Moo Deng went viral and 16-year-old football prodigy Lamine Yamal helped Spain win the European Championship.

It was a global year of elections, with countless millions of people in more than sixty countries going to the polls.

Vladimir Putin prevailed in a Russian vote widely dismissed as a sham, while a student uprising in Bangladesh toppled the ruling prime minister.

However, no vote has been as closely watched as the November 5 election, which will soon see Donald Trump back in the White House.

From Mexico to the Middle East, Trump’s impending return as commander in chief is already causing a stir.

The president-elect has threatened to inflict economic pain on China and boasted of his ability to stop the war in Ukraine within “24 hours.”

Unrest swept the Middle East as Bashar al-Assad fled Syria, Israel marched into southern Lebanon and engineered electronics exploded in a wave of assassinations against Hezbollah.

Citizens grew tired of the brutal war in Gaza, where dwindling supplies of food, shelter and medicine made the humanitarian crisis even more bleak.

“The year 2024 was the most difficult year,” Wafaa Hajjaj told AFP from Deir el-Balah, where crowds of displaced residents are now cramming into crowded tents.

“I have lost many loved ones since the beginning of this year, including my father and close friends,” she said.

“May safety and security return, and may the war finally end.”

There was hope and fear as the new year approached in Syria, which is still reeling after Islamist rebels overthrew longtime ruler Assad.

“We hesitated to go out this year because of the security situation, but we decided to overcome our fears and not change our habits,” 34-year-old lawyer Maram Ayoub told AFP from the capital Damascus.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine approaches its grim three-year anniversary in February.

Ukraine has been left behind on its eastern flank and now has to contend with a Trump administration apparently intent on rolling back crucial military aid.

On the streets of Kiev, teacher Kateryna Chemeryz wanted “to finally bring peace to Ukraine” and for “people to stop dying.”

With advances in AI on the horizon and rampant inflation threatening to slow, there’s still plenty to look forward to in 2025.

Britpop bad boys Oasis make a long-awaited reunion, while K-pop megastars BTS return to the stage after military service in South Korea.

Football fans will be treated to a revamped 32-team Club World Cup hosted in the United States.

And some 400 million pilgrims are expected to attend the spectacular Kumbh Mela festival on India’s sacred riverbanks – billed as the largest gathering of humanity on earth.

The British Weather Service has already forecast sweltering global temperatures for 2025, suggesting this is likely to be among the warmest years on record.

But as electric vehicle sales grow and renewable energy increases, there is a glimmer of hope that progress on climate change is finally gaining momentum.