How many days until New Year's Eve?

New Year's Eve is 31 December, and unlike the day that follows it, it is not a holiday — it is a working day that ends in the largest coordinated event on the country's calendar. This countdown runs to the start of the 31st rather than to midnight itself; for the turn of the year, the New Year countdown is the one that ends on the fireworks.

Planning for the evening starts far earlier than the date suggests. Restaurant tables along the waterfront are arranged months ahead, road closures around the Burj Khalifa, the Palm and the Abu Dhabi corniche are published days in advance, and the practical question for most residents is not where to watch but when to leave. People heading for the downtown displays commonly start moving in the early afternoon, which turns a twenty-minute journey into a three-hour one.

The weather makes an outdoor evening straightforward here in a way it is not in most of the northern hemisphere: late December nights sit somewhere around eighteen degrees, so the crowds along the coast are in shirtsleeves rather than coats.

The countdown reads from your own device's clock and rolls straight over to the following year once the date has passed, so it never needs resetting by hand.