SmogRank / History / Country race
Countries, worst air first, day by day
Each country's typical measured city over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Press Play to watch the order change, or drag the slider to any day.
The worst countries for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 14 Jan 2026: Pakistan 188.3 µg/m³, Kazakhstan 100.4 µg/m³ and Montenegro 68.4 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan12 cities188.3
- 2Kazakhstan4 cities100.4
- 3Montenegro4 cities68.4
- 4North Macedonia8 cities42.4
- 5Ghana3 cities39.9
- 6Thailand78 cities32.5
- 7Hungary13 cities31.7
- 8Poland57 cities29.2
- 9Romania22 cities28.6
- 10Slovenia12 cities26.6
- 11Hong Kong13 cities25.8
- 12Austria42 cities21.8
- 13Taiwan44 cities19.4
- 14Mexico38 cities18.5
- 15Philippines3 cities18.2
- 16Laos3 cities18.1
- 17Bulgaria4 cities17.3
- 18Chile46 cities17.3
- 19Latvia4 cities17.1
- 20Peru6 cities16.9
+ 21 more countries, 12.8 µg/m³ and below
- 37United States869 cities, was 2656.2
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: India since 13 Jan 2026, Senegal since 10 Jan 2026, Bosnia and Herzegovina since 9 Jan 2026 and 8 more countries.
Countries counted each day
A country's number is its typical measured city: the median of its cities' means over the 30 days (a city needs 21 of them measured; 5 of 7 on the 7-day race), shown only with 3 such cities. A country whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air; "was" beside a city count marks a month after many cities joined or left. 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.