Countries across the world ring in the new year

By Giulia Heyward

Published December 31, 2022 at 6:40 PM MST

Fireworks can be seen over the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia.

The year 2022 is turning to 2023 in time zones across the world, starting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Some of the first people who celebrated 2023 live in Kiribati, an island country in the Pacific Ocean, with a population of less than 122,000 people.

And some of the last people to celebrate the new year reside in the islands of Niue and American Samoa, which lie southwest of the Kiribati Islands but on the other side of the international date line.

Here's a look at how people are celebrating the New Year in various countries.

Australia

Japan

People try to cross the street shortly before midnight for New Year's celebrations in the Shibuya area of Tokyo.

Philippines

India

Indonesia

Thailand

National & World News

Giulia Heyward

Giulia Heyward is a weekend reporter for Digital News, based out of New York. She previously covered education and other national news as a reporting fellow at The New York Times and as the national education reporter at Capital B News. She interned for POLITICO, where she covered criminal justice reform in Florida, and CNN, as a writer for the trends & culture team. Her work has also been published in The Atlantic, HuffPost and The New Republic.