Sydney particularly gigantic The world gets off to a colorful start in 2025

Billions of people around the world celebrated the turn of the year with colorful parties. Especially gigantic in Sydney: around nine tons of pyrotechnics lit up the sky.

Keystone-SDA

01.01.2025, 09:49

01.01.2025, 10:13

SDA

In Sydney, Australia, the big fireworks display was particularly gigantic this time. Around nine tons of pyrotechnics lit up the sky above the harbour district. The fireworks were set off at 264 different points, significantly more than in previous years.

There were spectacular light shows or traditional events in many Asian cities, such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta. In London, around 100,000 people celebrated the turn of the year to the chimes of Big Ben and a spectacular firework display on the London Eye Ferris wheel.

Hundreds of thousands of people celebrated the New Year in New York's world-famous Times Square. At midnight, as every year, all eyes turned upwards for the "ball drop": At 11.55 pm, the John Lennon song "Imagine" played, and at 11.59 pm, a ball weighing almost 5,400 kilograms, decorated with 2,688 crystal triangles, descended around forty meters from the roof of the 26-storey Times Square One skyscraper on a special pole - until exactly midnight.

Germany's biggest New Year's Eve party took place at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with around 60,000 visitors. On New Year's Eve of all nights, the water supply in parts of the German capital failed due to a burst pipe. However, attacks on emergency services and firecracker accidents also overshadowed the celebrations: At least five men died while handling pyrotechnics, and several other people suffered injuries, some of them life-threatening.

In some places, the turn of the year turned out differently than planned due to the weather: On the German North Sea island of Sylt, the celebrations on the beach promenade were canceled due to storms. In the UK, fireworks and celebrations had to be canceled in several places. At the traditional Hogmanay festival in the Scottish capital Edinburgh, all outdoor events and the fireworks display at Edinburgh Castle were canceled due to stormy weather.

In Rotterdam in the Netherlands, a 14-year-old boy died on New Year's Eve while setting off fireworks. The newspaper "De Telegraaf" reported, citing eyewitnesses, that the teenager had tried to set fire to a Cobra firecracker, which is not authorized in the Netherlands.

In the seaside resort of Rimini on the Italian Adriatic coast, a knife attacker injured several passers-by on New Year's Eve and was subsequently shot dead by the police.

In Serbia, thousands of people marked the transition into the New Year with a silent protest. In the capital Belgrade and the northern city of Novi Sad, participants in the student-led demonstrations observed 15 minutes of silence from 11:52 p.m. to 00:07 a.m. to commemorate the 15 people killed in the Novi Sad train station roof collapse on November 1.

Around the world, American Samoa is the last country to ring in 2025. In Central Europe, it will be 12 noon and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's New Year's Concert will take place. At 13:00 CET, only two uninhabited islands will follow.