From Sydney to Rio de Janeiro, passing through Damascus or Paris, the world celebrated the arrival of 2025 last night with the requisite fireworks, after a year marked by the Olympics, the noisy return of Donald Trump, and new upheavals in the Middle East and Ukraine.

After the Asia-Pacific region kicked off the January 31 dance, the celebrations continued in the Middle East, Europe and the Americas.

As the midnight signal was sounded in Brazil, hundreds of thousands of people screamed with joy on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, where they watched a spectacular fireworks display and a nearly two-hour concert performed by legendary brothers Caetano Veloso and Maria Bethany, among other artists.

In New York City, tens of thousands of people gathered in iconic Times Square awaiting the descent of the famous five-ton illuminated globe that marks the passage into the new year.

“I truly wanted to experience this. In New York, it’s once in a lifetime,” says Jennifer Lopez, a Dominican living in a suburb of the city.

Five months after the euphoria of the Olympics, Paris is back in its best and has turned on all its lights for the passage into the new year. More than a million people gathered on the Champs-Elysées, the famous Champs-Elysées, where vehicle traffic was banned and dozens of lighted trees glittered along the boulevard.

“I had a very good year 2024. And I would like all years to be like 2024!” said an excited Mark Kopels, a Belgian who danced wildly on the Parisian cobblestones.

In Britain, thousands of people gathered on the banks of the River Thames in London to admire the fireworks, but bad weather caused events in other cities, notably Edinburgh, to be cancelled.

In his New Year’s speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine would fight in 2025 on the “battlefield” and at the “negotiating table” to end nearly three years of Russian invasion.

In Tbilisi, tens of thousands of pro-European demonstrators gathered in front of Georgia’s parliament to celebrate the new year, in a continuation of a month of protests against the government’s decision to suspend the EU membership process.

In Sydney, located on one of the world’s most easterly hourly spindles, more than a million people gathered in the city that bills itself as the “global capital of the New Year”.

Last year, millions of people also went to the polls in more than 60 countries.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin again won another presidential election despite accusations of fraud, while in Bangladesh the student movement deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina despite a violent crackdown.

No vote, however, was as suspenseful as the November 5 vote in the United States, which was won by former president Donald Trump, the target of two assassination attempts and convicted in a criminal court.

2024 was also a year of upheaval in the Middle East, with the end of more than 50 years of rule by the Assad clan in Syria and the return of the Israeli army to southern Lebanon.

In the centre of Damascus, hundreds of people gathered holding their flags with the colours of the “revolution”, expressing their “hope” for the new year after thirteen years of civil war in the devastated country.

“I hope that the Syria of 2025 will be a non-religious, pluralistic Syria, for everyone, without exception,” says Havan Mohamad, a Kurdish student originally from Kamisli in northeastern Syria.

In the Gaza Strip, civilians say they are exhausted by the war between Israel and the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas, which erupted with the October 7, 2023, attack.

On the entertainment front, iconic BritPop band Oasis will make their big return this summer, while K-pop icons BTS have promised their “ARMY” – the “ARMY” of their fans, as they call them – that they will be back after June, once the band members’ military service is complete.

Soccer fans will be able to enjoy a 32-team World Cup to be held in the United States.

But after a 2024 year even hotter than the previous one, 2025 is expected to be one of the three years with the highest temperatures ever recorded.