SmogRank / History / City race

Cities in Germany, 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 to14 Oct 2025 That day's board

The worst cities in Germany for PM2.5 over the 30 days to 14 Oct 2025: Dortmund 10.5 µg/m³, Hagen 10.2 µg/m³ and Mannheim 9.8 µg/m³.

  1. 1DortmundNorth Rhine-Westphalia10.5
  2. 2HagenNorth Rhine-Westphalia10.2
  3. 3MannheimBaden-Wurttemberg9.8
  4. 4SpeyerRheinland-Pfalz9.3
  5. 5Ludwigshafen am RheinRheinland-Pfalz9.3
  6. 6OberhausenNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.9
  7. 7MahlowBrandenburg8.8
  8. 8DüsseldorfNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.8
  9. 9WormsRheinland-Pfalz8.7
  10. 10KrefeldNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.7
  11. 11BottropNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.7
  12. 12BerlinState of Berlin8.7
  13. 13NeuwiedRheinland-Pfalz8.6
  14. 14EssenNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.6
  15. 15Bad KreuznachRheinland-Pfalz8.6
  16. 16GelsenkirchenNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.5
  17. 17DuisburgNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.5
  18. 18WuppertalNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.4
  19. 19KölnNorth Rhine-Westphalia8.4
  20. 20Trostberg an der AlzBavaria8.3

+ 225 more cities, 8.3 µg/m³ and below

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.