Kiribati Trivia
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39 free Kiribati trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Kiribati is pronounced "Kiribass", sits on both sides of the equator and the 180th meridian, owns the world's most advanced time zone and one of its largest marine reserves, and was the first country to greet the year 2000. It is also where one of the bloodiest battles in US Marine Corps history was fought, where Britain tested its first hydrogen bombs, and where rising seas may erase a nation. This Kiribati trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-three questions run from geography (the 32 atolls and Banaba, Tarawa, Kiritimati, the Line and Phoenix Islands, the Date Line shift of 1995, the 81-metre high point) through history (Thomas Gilbert, the British protectorate, phosphate on Ocean Island, the Japanese occupation, the Battle of Tarawa, Grapple, independence in 1979, Tuvalu's split) to politics and culture (Ieremia Tabai, Anote Tong, Taneti Maamau, the frigatebird flag, the maneaba, Gilbertese, the Australian dollar, te buki dancing, David Katoatau's Olympic dances). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the Pacific. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 39 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How do the islanders themselves pronounce the name Kiribati?
Kirr-i-bass
Kirr-i-bass is how islanders say it, because in their language a t before an i shifts to an s sound.
Q 02Which vanished aviator do some researchers believe landed on Nikumaroro, an atoll in Kiribati?
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart may have died there as a castaway, but bones found on the island in 1940 were later lost, leaving only a doctor's measurements.
Q 03In which country did Kiribati's Ioane Teitiota lose his bid to become the first recognised climate refugee?
New Zealand
New Zealand's High Court called his case 'unconvincing', and he was deported back to Kiribati in 2015.
Q 04Which of these imaginary lines runs through Kiribati?
Equator
The Equator crosses Kiribati, and its islands stretch so far from west to east that the country has land in all four hemispheres.
Q 05Kiribati's Line Islands keep the same clock time as which city, but a whole day ahead?
Honolulu
Honolulu runs on UTC−10, as the Line Islands did until Kiribati moved them to UTC+14 at the end of 1994, keeping the clock but jumping a day.
Q 06Foreign fleets pay Kiribati hefty licence fees each year, chiefly to catch which fish?
Tuna
Tuna follow warm water east into Kiribati's zone in El Niño years, so its licence income swings with the climate cycle.
Q 07Caroline Island in the Line Islands was renamed in the 1990s to mark what?
The new millennium
The new millennium: after the date-line shift made it among the first land to reach 1 January 2000, dancers and singers travelled there to greet it.
Q 08What is the capital of Kiribati?
Tarawa
Tarawa, the capital atoll, saw some of the Pacific War's fiercest fighting when it was stormed in November 1943.
Q 09The largest atoll in Kiribati by land area takes its local name from which English word?
Christmas
Christmas lent the atoll its name, because European explorers landed there on Christmas Eve in 1777.
Q 10Which British explorer led the 1777 expedition that reached Kiribati's largest atoll?
James Cook
James Cook chose to anchor there to try to get turtles, as the island looked like a good place for them.
Q 11Which Kiribati island was the main base for Britain's 1957 hydrogen-bomb tests?
Kiritimati
Kiritimati's islanders were mostly moved off the atoll before the first of the 1957 tests.
Q 12Ocean Island joined the British protectorate after which resource was found there?
Phosphate
Phosphate was mined there until 1979, and most of the island's people were resettled on Rabi Island in Fiji from 1945.
Q 13Which country's doctors arrived in Kiribati in 2006 as part of a medical aid programme?
Cuba
Cuba also took I-Kiribati students to train as doctors, and twenty were studying medicine there by late 2007.
Q 21Who became Kiribati's fifth president in March 2016?
Taneti Maamau
Taneti Maamau's government dropped Taiwan for China in 2019, reversing the switch Kiribati had made in Taiwan's favour in 2003.
Q 22Kiribati has used which country's currency as its domestic money?
Australia
The Australian bank ANZ runs branches and ATMs on the islands; the government lives largely on fishing licence fees and aid.
Q 23The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, a World Heritage Site from 2010, was then the world's largest and what?
Deepest
It covers about 408,000 km2, more than 11% of the country's exclusive economic zone.
Q 14Which slogan did the US Marine Raiders who struck Kiribati's Makin atoll in 1942 make famous?
Gung ho
Gung ho came from the Chinese short name for industrial cooperatives, which Evans Carlson borrowed to build a spirit of working together among his men.
Q 15The bloodiest battle of November 1943 in present-day Kiribati was mostly fought on which tiny island?
Betio
Betio's reef stayed too shallow for landing craft when the tide failed to rise, so many Marines had to wade hundreds of yards ashore under fire.
Q 16The Ellice Islands became which independent country in 1978?
Tuvalu
Tuvalu is what the Ellice Islands became after their Polynesian people voted in 1974 to split from their Micronesian neighbours.
Q 17Who was the chief minister whose cabinet chose the name Kiribati for the new state?
Ieremia Tabai
Ieremia Tabai later spent four years fighting the government for a licence to run the country's first private radio station.
Q 18In a 1979 treaty of friendship, which country gave up its claims to the Phoenix and Line Islands?
United States
The United States gave up those claims but kept the nearby islands of Howland and Baker as its own territory.
Q 19Which Kiribati president, in office 2003–2016, made climate change central to its diplomacy?
Anote Tong
Anote Tong's government also bought a large estate in Fiji as a hedge against the effects of climate change on the islands.
Q 20On which Fijian island did Kiribati buy a forested estate as a possible refuge from rising seas?
Vanua Levu
Vanua Levu is where Kiribati bought the estate, and the seller was the Church of England.
Q 24Which bird flies over a rising sun on Kiribati's flag?
Frigatebird
Frigatebird and sun were to be enlarged by Britain's College of Arms, but islanders insisted on keeping their original design.
Q 25What is the traditional Kiribati meeting house, the centre of tribal and national governance, called?
Maneaba
It has a high coconut-wood roof on coral posts, thatched with pandanus, and the whole community helps build it.
Q 26What language do the I-Kiribati speak?
Gilbertese
Gilbertese took its modern written form through missionary Hiram Bingham II, who was the first to translate the Bible into it.
Q 27Kiribati's population is predominantly of which religion?
Roman Catholic
Catholicism arrived on Nonouti around 1880 via two islanders converted in Tahiti; about 59% of people are Catholic today.
Q 28Kiribati dance is distinguished by outstretched arms and sudden movements of the head resembling what?
A bird
The frigatebird on the flag is emblematic of the style; formal standing and hip dances use a wooden box as percussion.
Q 29Kiribati's David Katoatau drew world attention at the Rio 2016 Olympics by doing what on the competition stage?
Dancing
Dancing was his way of drawing attention to climate change and the rising seas that threaten his homeland.
Q 30Kiribati won its first-ever Commonwealth Games medal in 2014 in which sport?
Weightlifting
Weightlifting brought that gold, and David Katoatau built a home after his win, only for the sea to wash it away.