They always put on a good New Year’s Eve show in Athens. I am of an age where most of the gigs I have already booked to see in 2024 are very much on the 80s and 90s nostalgia circuit, and if you are in London you may well bump into me watching Suede, the Manics, Depeche Mode, OMD and The The at some point next year. Fortunately my colleagues Alexis Petridis and Andrew Clements are on hand to point you in the direction of some rather more contemporary things to look out for next year. My personal shouts for new music would be Nadine Shah, Modern Woman, The New Eves and hopefully new material from Desperate Journalist. I sometimes wear a Desperate Journalist T-shirt to the Guardian office, and you can insert your own punchline there. Here are some more of the New Year’s Eve images being sent to us over the news wires. It is just approaching midnight in Kyiv, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has issued a message on the Telegram app, writing: Ukrainians are stronger than cold and darkness. Ukrainians are stronger than intrigues, lies, pain, despair and discord. Ukrainians are stronger than fear. Ukrainians are stronger than terror. Ukrainians are stronger than evil. Ukrainians are stronger than this war. Ukrainians are stronger together! Earlier he published a joint message with his wife, Olena Zelenska, in which they said: The Ukrainian new year is not only a time for greetings, but also for action. Not only for wishes, but also for doing everything possible to make them come true. We, the Ukrainians, understand better than anybody else that a better future does not come by itself, but only because we defend each of our tomorrows. Our new year will be what we make it. The new year’s miracle, but also the year-round miracle, is all of you: dedicated, responsible, caring, and effective. It looks busy in Paris, where crowds have gathered at the Champs-Elysées. The onlookers are being treated to what looks like a rather complicated open air acrobatic performance. No, this isn’t a picture of me after several hours of live blogging New Year’s Eve, this is in fact part of a procession in Laupen in Switzerland where “bells, brooms, pig bladders, and eerie masks are used to drive away evil spirits in a festive procession starting from Laupen Castle”. I guess it helps pass the time. It has been many a long year since I personally last ventured into the centre of London for the New Year’s Eve fireworks display, but it looks like plenty of people have braved the weather there so far tonight. There is a big security operation going in Berlin this evening, with an expected 4,500 police officers on the streets. Associated Press report that police in the German capital have issued a ban on the traditional use of firecrackers for several streets across the city. One of the advantages of having both the Guardian and the Observer output on the one website is that sometimes you get a second chance at something. If you didn’t do too well on the Guardian quiz of the year I linked to earlier, why not try your hand at this one from the Observer? Do the quiz set by Séamas O’Reilly and Dara O’Reilly here: The Observer big 2023 quiz of the year It has just gone midnight in Moscow. As he usually does, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has broadcast a video message, which is shown in each different Russian time zone at midnight. Observers have noted that this year it made no specific mention of the war in Ukraine or “special military operation”, as Russian authorities have insisted on calling it. In the address, though, Putin did say: Today I would like to address our military personnel, everyone who is at a combat post, at the forefront of the fight for truth and justice. You are our heroes, our hearts are with you. We are proud of you, we admire your courage, knowing that now you feel the love of your closest, dearest, dearest people, the sincere support of millions of Russian citizens, the support of the entire people. We have proven more than once that we can solve the most difficult problems and will never give up, because there is no force that can separate us. It does seem that wherever you are in the world, setting things on fire so they shoot up into the sky is very much the done thing tonight – whether it is large scale, small scale or even handheld. I wouldn’t say that my dog Willow has entirely thrown herself into the party spirit this evening, but if your pet has, do send me a photo – martin.belam@theguardian.com. While we are looking ahead to the new year, Peter Bradshaw has produced this list of films to look forward to in 2024, of which Poor Things, The End We Start From and Copa 71 have all caught my eye. Anne Billson had a great piece about Emma Stone in Poor Things the other day, and if you are feeling reflective or worried about catching up with something you missed in the cinema, then our 50 best films of 2023 in the UK is also available. Personally my favourite things I saw at the cinema this year included Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, the glorious revival of The Red Shoes for its 75th anniversary, and I had a lot of time for Sissy, Sick of Myself and Close. People are already waiting at the barricades in Times Square in New York for the celebrations at midnight, which are just over eight hours away for the east coast of the US. Meanwhile in Bondi Beach in Sydney people have already slept off their celebrations and headed to the beach. Not sure about the headgear on display here to be honest. Not everyone around the world will be able to spend New Year’s Eve with their loved ones. In Israel today the Knesset was lit up in yellow in a show of support for hostages still being held in Gaza after they were seized and abducted on 7 October. Streets in Jerusalem are still covered in posters showing the faces of those who authorities say are still being held captive inside the Gaza Strip. And in Tel Aviv earlier today students gave a dance performance in tribute to one of the people believed to be a hostage of Hamas. I am very aware that while I am trying to keep things mostly lighthearted on this blog this evening, that it has not been a happy 2023 and will not be a happy 2024 for a lot of people on the planet. Regular visitors to the Guardian website might recognise my name as someone who is frequently doing the live blog coverage of conflicts and disasters around the world. Knowing that I would be doing tonight’s coverage, I was struck earlier this week by a photoset of Palestinian artist Menna Allah Hamouda running a facepainting session in the beseiged Gaza Strip to try to give the children stuck there at least a glimpse of new year celebrations. For a somewhat sobering look at what 2024 might hold politically, several of my colleagues contributed to this piece, which outlines some of the key moments and ways that global conflicts may develop over the next 12 months. You do get some absolutely spectacular photographs over the news wires on New Year’s Eve, and these span several countries and time zones. It has just gone midnight in the United Arab Emirates, where there are often competing spectacular displays. Dubai’s usually centres on the landmark Burj Khalifa, and this year is no different. I am yet to realise my ambition to write for the Fortean Times as pocket money during my retirement, but this month’s edition of the magazine about strange phenomena and experiences has a feature on the Enfield Poltergeist that leans into my interviews with the two teams behind two plays about the case which have been on the stage in the UK. If you want an idea of what you might want to look out for on stage next year, whether it involves ghosts or not, then you need go no further than this list by my colleagues Arifa Akbar, Lyndsey Winship and Brian Logan. Some New Year’s Eve fireworks cancelled as heavy rain and high winds buffet UK Tom Ambrose Inclement weather has caused several New Year’s Eve firework displays to be cancelled, as heavy rain and high winds threatened to dampen the party spirit of thousands of revellers. In the south-west of England, a winter wonderland event in Plymouth and a Devon town’s firework display were among those to be pulled due to the wet conditions on Sunday, and the Met Office warned that exposed coasts and hills on the southern coast of England and in south Wales would continue to be battered by strong winds. Organisers of Plymouth’s winter wonderland said they had taken the “very difficult decision” to cancel its plans for New Year’s Eve because of severe gales. “As much as we are very disappointed and frustrated, your safety comes first, as well as ours, and we can’t possibly take the risk,” they said, while confirming those who had bought tickets will be fully refunded. Meanwhile, Barnstaple, in Devon, cancelled its annual fireworks because of the “horrendous” weather, Devon Live reported. An early evening firework display, often attended by families and children, was also scrapped because of the weather, it was reported. Macron: 2024 will be a year of French "pride" and "hope" President Emmanuel Macron vowed this evening that 2024 will be the year of French pride and hope, marked by the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games and Paralympics, and the re-opening of Notre Dame Cathedral after the devastating 2019 fire. “Only once in a century does one host Olympic and Paralympic Games, only once in a millennium does one rebuild a cathedral,” Reuters reports Macron said. “2024, a year of determination, choices, recovery, pride. In fact, a year of hope.” He spoke in a televised address ahead of New Year celebrations during which about 90,000 police and 5,000 soldiers will be deployed to ensure security and address what the government called a “very high” terrorist threat. France will continue to “re-arm” itself when it comes to security matters, but also boost public education and social cohesion, Macron said. Midnight is still just under 90 minutes away in Istanbul, but there are already some great pictures coming through of people gathered there – some more enthusiastically than others by the looks of things. It still baffles me that video games remain treated like the third wheel of the entertainment industry by much of the media, given that pretty much everybody with access to them has been playing electronic games for the best part of five decades, but there you go. But if you wonder what you might be playing during 2024, look no further … By the way, my favourite game last year (outside the blockbuster title of Baldur’s Gate III and still not quite having finished Red Dead Redemption II because I can’t face the ending) was Dredge – which Keza described as “a clever, compelling fishing adventure game with an eldritch twist”. It is a one-player game but doing it together kept me and my 10 and 14-year-old kids obsessively entertained for long periods this year. Dredge also made it on to our list of games you may have missed in 2023. Associated Press reports that in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, the mood appeared upbeat as people gathered for a fireworks show at the bamboo-shaped Taipei 101 skyscraper, as well as at concerts and other events held throughout the city. They may have been less enthused to find out that in his new year address, Chinese president Xi Jinping today said “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose.”