SmogRank / History / City race
Cities, 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.
The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 23 Dec 2025: Noida 266.9 µg/m³, Bawāna 266.6 µg/m³ and Peshawar 266.1 µg/m³.
- 1NoidaIndia266.9
- 2BawānaIndia266.6
- 3PeshawarPakistan266.1
- 4FaisalabadPakistan250.7
- 5NarelaIndia247.3
- 6GujranwalaPakistan243.4
- 7LahorePakistan239.5
- 8SialkotPakistan238.6
- 9DelhiIndia238.5
- 10DādriIndia219.6
- 11BahawalpurPakistan217.2
- 12MultanPakistan210.6
- 13GhāziābādIndia190.6
- 14RawalpindiPakistan186.1
- 15Dera MāndiIndia170.4
- 16GurugramIndia169.0
- 17NajafgarhIndia165.8
- 18Greater NoidaIndia162.4
- 19MeerutIndia161.9
- 20PanchkulaIndia159.1
+ 3,159 more cities, 154.8 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Rohtak since 22 Dec 2025, Dhāruhera since 21 Dec 2025, Rahim Yar Khan since 20 Dec 2025 and 5 more cities.
Cities counted each 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.