Why do UTC+14 even exist?
Short exploration essay by LuckyToday Geography.
Have you ever wondered amongst the diversity of regions and countries around Earth, what other people on the other side might be doing? Putting this in a scenario, you could be commuting to work, while people on the other side of the world are already getting off school; how does that work? Why does time work like that, and what are the possible timezones around the world? This brings us to the topic of time zones and UTCs, a fundamental tool for the modern world to operate.
Wait, what even is a UTC?
According to Space (2024), UTC, recognized as an abbreviation of Coordinated Universal Time, is considered a standard in order to describe time difference and time zones around the world.
1884 was the year where 26 countries from all around the world came together to the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, with the purpose to set a specific longitude coordinate at the default point of timezones, which allowed an universal standard of time. The coordinate was set at Greenwich, United Kingdom (Time Machines, 2020).
As mentioned above, hence United Kingdom takes the timezone of UTC+0 (also known as GMT: Greenwich Meant Time, which is equivalent to UTC), and time increases or decreases by 1 hour for every 15° of longitude moved east or west respectively (timeanddate, 2025), although there are many exceptions due to country borders and other political reasons; one example being China, it has always fascinated me that such a big country has only one timezone! It is said that the united timezone, which also called the Beijing Time, it enforces the message of unity inside the nation (China Adventure, 2025).
Fun fact: From the information above, you might interpret that there are 24 total time zones in the world, but including all the other irregular time zones, such as half and quarter hour time zones, it is counted that there are 38 unique time zones in our world (GeoPostCodes, 2024).
Additionally, let’s also look into the International Date Line. Often abbreviated as the IDL, which is a imaginary concept created by humans to describe timezones; where land could be only miles apart, but are technically in different days. Seeing it’s weird, crooked shape on the given picture below, the International Date Line also explains country borders: it is easier for countries located near the 180° longitude to operate if they unite the timezone within the region, so that some parts of the country won’t be 24 hours away but technically in walking distance.
The international dateline (Earth How, 2025).
From the information above, we can depict that countries west of United Kingdom would have a UTC- timezone, and countries east of United Kingdom would have a UTC+ timezone; but is that always true? For this, we can go back to our topic on the UTC+14 timezone.
The fascinating country of Kiribati, one and only user of the UTC+14 timezone
The Republic of Kiribati (beware, it’s pronounced Kiribas!), also known as Kiribati for short, is an island nation located in the central Pacific Ocean of the Micronesia region, which is a sub-region of Oceania. Kiribati consists of 3 major island groups, which are the Gilbert Islands, the Phoenix Islands, and the Line Islands, which in total has 33 coral islands which spans over 3441810 km² of ocean. The country consists of 811km² of total land area, making Kiribati the 172nd largest country on the list. The country’s has a permanent population of around 119000, but half its population (around 59500) living in its capital, Tarawa.
Fun fact: Kiribati is actually the only nation in the world which spans into all four hemispheres of the world! Its unique geographical location also contributes to the reason why parts of this nation uses UTC+14.
Kiribati shown as located on all four hemispheres (Reddit, 2025)
Given Kiribati’s geographical location in the central Pacific Ocean, it was right between the IDL, hence according to the UTC, certain islands or regions would have a significant early or later time than the islands on the other side of the 180° longitude.
In order to fix that problem, Kiribati and islands which encountered the same problem, such as Oceanic nations like Tonga, and islands owned by New Zealand, including Kermadec Islands and Chatham Islands, would bends the line, which explains the crooked way of looking of the IDL. The International Date Kine being a human created imaginary concept, it’s not difficult for countries to alter it to their favour. Hence, the country of Kiribati now uses 3 total timezones: UTC+12, UTC+13, and UTC+14.
Fun fact: Due to the implementation of UTC+14, Kiribati is the first country to celebrate the New Year.
Why the sudden change?
The separation from timezones really disrupted economic development and trade in Kiribati due to the significant time difference. Due to its complexity of timezones, technically, 4 days of the week are considered suitable for Kiribati to trade with other countries, which deducted the effectiveness of necessities entering or exiting Kiribati. According to data of 2021 from WITS, Kiribati’s main export partners includes countries such as Malaysia, Japan, Fiji, and the United States, and its import partners being Fiji, China, Australia etc; we can deduce that most of its trading partners are located at East Asia and the Pacific.
1st January, 1995, the president and foreign minister of Kiribati, Teburoro Tito, announced the timezone change of the country, where the International Date Line will cut on the right of the country of Kiribati, where the Kiribati islands originally on the right of the IDL skip 24 hours ahead, making foreign trade which the East Asia and Pacific region easier, and hence ‘created’ the concept of UTC+13 and UTC+14, which is respectively 13 and 14 hours ahead of Greenwich, United Kingdom. This also created the illusion to east Kiribati inhabitants, which they skipped the 31st December, 1994.
Reference(s):
Mann, A. (2024, June 25). What is UTC? Space. https://www.space.com/what-is-utc.html
Time and Date. (n.d.). UTC time standard. https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/timezone/utc
TimeMachines Corp. (2020, December 10). The history of Coordinated Universal Time. https://timemachinescorp.com/2020/12/10/the-history-of-coordinated-universal-time/?srsltid=AfmBOorkEYQzAzUzMlG2QEQk-K-eHfiMzs70_6Eib-cF8OCkPXiZRPyy
TimeTemperature.com. (n.d.). Australia time zone globe. https://www.timetemperature.com/globes/australia-time-zone-globe.shtml
China Adventure. (2025, June 9). How many time zones in China? https://www.chinaadventure.org/how-many-time-zones-in-china.html
Kiribati National Tourism Office. (n.d.). Accommodations – Kiribati for travellers. https://www.kiribatitourism.gov.ki/kiribati-pacific-ocean-location/
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, October 1). Kiribati. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiribati
Reddit. (2014, January 16). Kiribati: The only country spanning all four hemispheres. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1hqjqsn/kiribati_the_only_country_spanning_all_four/
Earth How. (n.d.). Where is the International Date Line? https://earthhow.com/international-date-line/
Hernandez, M. (2024, August 20). How many time zones are there? GeoPostcodes. https://www.geopostcodes.com/blog/how-many-time-zones-are-there
University of Utrecht. (n.d.). A history of the International Date Line - Kiribati/Samoa adjustments. https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/idl/idl_recent.htm
World Bank. (2022). Kiribati trade balance, exports, imports by country and region 2022. https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/Country/KIR/Year/LTST/TradeFlow/EXPIMP#:~:text=by%20country%20and%20region,-2021&text=In%202021%2C%20Kiribati%20major%20trading,Australia%2C%20Singapore%20and%20New%20Zealand.
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