New Year countdown
This timer counts down to midnight on January 1 in your own time zone, to the second. Below it is the weekday of New Year's Day for the next five years and the order in which the world reaches midnight.
Countdowns run on your device's clock and time zone, so they reach zero at local midnight wherever you are.
Who reaches midnight first
The new year starts at UTC+14 in Kiritimati (Christmas Island) in Kiribati, at 10:00 UTC on December 31. Samoa and Tonga follow an hour later at UTC+13, the same offset as New Zealand during its summer daylight time, which makes Auckland the first large city to celebrate. Sydney's harbour fireworks begin at midnight AEDT, 13:00 UTC, and Tokyo and Seoul follow two hours later.
Europe celebrates between 22:00 and 23:00 UTC, London at 00:00 UTC, and New York's ball drop in Times Square, a tradition since the 1907–08 New Year, happens at 05:00 UTC. The last inhabited places are American Samoa and Niue at UTC−11, more than a full day after Kiritimati. The world clock shows the current local time in 69 cities if you want to watch the midnight wave move west.
Upcoming New Year dates
| Date | Weekday | Days until |
|---|---|---|
| Friday | in 75 days | |
| Saturday | in 440 days | |
| Monday | in 806 days | |
| Tuesday | in 1,171 days | |
| Wednesday | in 1,536 days |
New Year's Day on the calendar
January 1, 2027 is a Friday, so New Year's Eve 2026 is a Thursday night and many countries get a three-day weekend. 2028 starts on a Saturday, 2029 on a Monday because 2028 is a leap year, 2030 on a Tuesday and 2031 on a Wednesday. When January 1 lands on a weekend, the UK and several other countries move the public holiday to the next Monday.
Not every culture starts its year on January 1. Lunar New Year usually falls in late January or February, the Persian Nowruz is at the March equinox, and the Islamic and Jewish new years follow their own calendars. For a gap between any two dates, the days between dates calculator does the counting.
Other countdowns
Frequently asked questions
- How long until New Year's midnight?
- The timer at the top of this page shows the exact days, hours, minutes and seconds until 00:00 on January 1 in your time zone. It runs on your device clock and updates every second.
- What time is New Year in UTC for London and New York?
- London reaches midnight at 00:00 UTC because it is on GMT in winter. New York, on Eastern Standard Time, reaches it five hours later at 05:00 UTC.
- What weekday is January 1, 2027?
- Friday. New Year's Day 2028 is a Saturday and New Year's Day 2029 is a Monday.
- Which country celebrates New Year last?
- American Samoa and Niue, at UTC−11, are the last inhabited places to reach midnight. The uninhabited Baker and Howland Islands sit at UTC−12.
- Is there ever an extra second at New Year?
- Leap seconds have been added at the end of December 31 several times, most recently in 2016. None has been needed since, and timekeeping bodies have agreed to stop adding them by 2035.