New Year celebrations across the globe
Here's how the world is ringing in 2019
Athens
Istanbul
Dubai
Beirut
Riyadh
Karachi
Mumbai
Bangladesh
New Year celebrations in Dhaka tonight are likely to be muted owing to several regulations and restrictions including banning of fireworks.
Jakarta
Huge crowds at Jakarta's Hotel Kempinski celebrate the countdown to 2019 in Indonesia.
Bangkok
Hong Kong
North Korea
North Korea welcomed in 2019 with a fireworks display.
Auckland
In Auckland, New Zealand’s biggest city, tens of thousands gathered around Sky Tower as fireworks exploded from the top of the 328-meter (1,076-foot) structure. Across the southern-hemisphere nation, thousands took to beaches and streets, becoming the first major nation in the world to usher in 2019.
Sydney
Sydney bids 2018 good bye in torrential rain as storms dampened New Year celebrations in the city. The storms brought 8mm of rain and lightning strikes, making the 8pm aerial flyover display impossible.
Up to 1 million people gathered for the massive NYE fireworks display.
The thunderstorms have drenched New Year’s Eve crowds. Rain fell over the harbour, with even heavier falls elsewhere over the metropolitan area. A huge shower began just after 7pm, forcing many people diving under blankets to shield themselves from the rain.
Sydney’s skies saw the first of two huge fireworks displays at 9pm — three hours before the main event, watched by millions around the world.
Weathermen said the thunderstorms went away just before midnight.
Sydney’s skies saw the first of two huge fireworks displays at 9pm - three hours before the main event, which will be watched by millions around the world.
The spectacular fireworks show on Sydney's harbour that rang in 2019 and dazzled spectators around the world was picture perfect, except for one element - it got the year wrong.
More than 1.5 million people packed the harbour front of Australia's largest city to watch the extravaganza, and noticed a signage beamed onto one of the Sydney Harbour Bridge's pylons had the words "Happy New Year 2018!"
Photos of the typo were shared on social media sites.
"According to Sydney, it's still 2018, so I'm going back to bed," one Twitter user quipped.
Another wrote: "Oh will this horrible year never end."
Organisers the City of Sydney, who invested huge resources and time into planning one of the world's first New Year's parties, saw the funny side of the mistake.
"We just laughed about it, you know these things happen as we said, it takes 15 months to organise an event of this size and scale," the fireworks' executive producer Anna McInerney told reporters in Sydney Tuesday.
"Obviously we weren't pleased, but look you move on, you just get back to doing the show."