New Year’s Eve: ball drops in New York’s Times Square as celebrations take place across the globe – as it happened

With that, we are ending this live New Year’s coverage. A very very happy 2025 to all of you, and thank you as always for reading. May your year involve lots and lots more reading of all kinds – and more confetti:

Good news for home buyers in the UK in 2025: experts have predicted a “buyer’s market” for house hunters in the year ahead, giving them greater negotiating power as the mood of the housing market shifts to “cautious optimism”.

However, even the more hopeful expectations for 2025 were met with caution, as an important stamp duty relief for first-time buyers was scheduled to end in the spring, as well as potentially high interest rates and taxes bearing down on the market.

Photographs from Brazil, Slovenia and the US:

Next up are the central USA, Mexico City, Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and a small part of Ecuador.

It is very newly the year 2025 on the US east coast – New York City, Washington DC, Detroit – as well as parts of Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Cuba, Acre in Brazil, Panama, a small part of Mexico, Haiti, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands, Jamaica, a small region of Chile, and the Cayman Islands.

And – why not? – more!

Here are some photographs from the celebrations in Times Square:

The ball has dropped, it is 2025 in New York City and much of the rest of the world. Auld Lang Syne plays over the screams and cheers of the crowd, followed by Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York.

The ball is sparkling purple, and the countdown has begun: 20 seconds to go.

Five minutes to go until the ball drop in New York City.

The organisation managing Times Square has tested the drop and inspected 2025 numerals, lights and thousands of crystals as part of a tradition going back to 1907. This year’s celebration includes musical performances by TLC, Jonas Brothers, Rita Ora and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

By Tuesday evening, people who had been in line for hours moved through a gauntlet of security checks, and then rested up for the night of performances and cheering ahead, with some even laying on the pavement.

“It’s the biggest party in the world. There’s no other place to celebrate New Year’s than Times Square,” said Tommy Onolfo of Long Island, who started attending regularly eight years ago.

Some different ways to ring in the new year across the globe:

There’s a bit of rain in New York but that hasn’t dampened spirits for revellers in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop.

The fireworks and ball drop in Times Square, New York, will take place in just over an hour.