Dazzling fireworks lit up Australia's Sydney Harbor, communist Vietnam held a rare, Western-style countdown to the new year, and Japanese revellers released balloons carrying notes with people's hopes and dreams as the world ushered in 2011.
In Europe, Greeks, Irish and Spaniards partied through the night to help put a year of economic woe behind them. And in New York, nearly a million New Year's Eve revellers were expected to cram into Times Square to watch the midnight ball drop, just days after the city got clobbered by a blizzard.
People gathered in Madrid's Puerta del Sol square in a chilly drizzle to take part in Las Uvas or The Grapes, a tradition in which people eat a grape for each of the 12 chimes of midnight, after which they drink and spray each other with sparkling cava wine. Chewing and swallowing the grapes in time is supposed to bring good luck. Cheating, on the other hand, is frowned on and can bring misfortune.
2010 was a grim year for many in the European Union, with Greece and Ireland needing bailouts and countries such as Spain and Portugal finding themselves in financial trouble as well.
New Zealanders and South Pacific island nations were among the first to celebrate at midnight. In New Zealand's Auckland, explosions of red, gold and white burst over the Sky Tower, while tens of thousands danced and sang in the streets below. In Christchurch, party-goers shrugged off a minor 3.3 earthquake that struck just before 10pm.
Multicolored starbusts and gigantic sparklers lit the midnight sky over Sydney Harbour in a pyrotechnics show witnessed by 1.5 million spectators. "This has got to be the best place to be in the world tonight," said Marc Wilson, 41.
Hundreds of thousands of people gathered along Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor to watch fireworks explode from the roofs of 10 of the city's most famous buildings.
In Vietnam's capital, Hanoi, an estimated 55,000 people packed a square in front of the city's elegant French colonial-style opera house for their first New Year's countdown blowout, complete with strobe lights and thumping techno music spun by international DJs.
Vietnamese typically save their biggest celebrations for Tet, the lunar new year that begins on February 3. But in recent years, Western influence has started seeping into Vietnamese culture among teens, who have no memory of war or poverty and are eager to find a new reason to party in the communist country.
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At Japan's Zojoji temple in Tokyo, monks chanted and revellers marked the arrival of the new year by releasing silver balloons with notes inside. The temple's giant 15-ton bell rang in the background.
