SmogRank / History / City race

Cities in India, worst air first, day by day

Each measured city's average over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Find your own city to follow it through the race, or keep to one country.

CountriesCities
The 30 days to15 May 2025 That day's board

The worst cities in India for PM2.5 over the 30 days to 15 May 2025: Bawāna 99.2 µg/m³, Narela 97.7 µg/m³ and Dispur 92.6 µg/m³.

  1. 1BawānaDelhi99.2
  2. 2NarelaDelhi97.7
  3. 3DispurAssam92.6
  4. 4LoniUttar Pradesh91.2
  5. 5GobindgarhPunjab80.3
  6. 6Dera MāndiDelhi75.4
  7. 7DelhiDelhi73.2
  8. 8NajafgarhDelhi72.7
  9. 9GhāziābādUttar Pradesh69.8
  10. 10MuzaffarnagarUttar Pradesh69.6
  11. 11BhiwadiRajasthan68.9
  12. 12SingrauliMadhya Pradesh67.3
  13. 13LucknowUttar Pradesh65.7
  14. 14SasarāmBihar65.4
  15. 15Sri GanganagarRajasthan63.6
  16. 16BulandshahrUttar Pradesh63.3
  17. 17BathindaPunjab61.6
  18. 18RourkelaOdisha61.1
  19. 19RamanathapuramTamil Nadu61.0
  20. 20BikanerRajasthan56.7

+ 187 more cities, 53.8 µg/m³ and below

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Navalpattu since 5 May 2025, Dewas since 2 May 2025, Hanumāngarh since 28 Apr 2025 and 9 more cities.

30 days7 days
GoodModerateSensitive groupsUnhealthyVery unhealthyHazardousWHO 24-hour guideline, 15 µg/m³Fades where it stood: not counted that day

A city's number is its average over the 30 days, shown only when 21 of them were measured (5 of 7 on the 7-day race), the same minimum as the 30- and 7-day boards. A city whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air. Some large countries are thin or missing because their monitors' licences don't allow reuse. How we rank.

Not covered: the government monitoring networks of China and Turkey, which publish only on their own websites; we are building the readers for them. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.