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 22 Jan 2026: Pakistan 219.9 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 216.0 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 77.9 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan12 cities219.9
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities216.0
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities77.9
- 4Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities72.5
- 5Poland59 cities53.6
- 6North Macedonia12 cities53.0
- 7Montenegro5 cities52.6
- 8Romania22 cities43.3
- 9Hungary12 cities39.6
- 10Ghana4 cities39.4
- 11Thailand77 cities35.7
- 12Latvia4 cities34.7
- 13Philippines3 cities32.6
- 14Bulgaria6 cities30.4
- 15Slovenia12 cities28.8
- 16Chile44 cities26.0
- 17Hong Kong13 cities25.2
- 18South Korea140 cities24.5
- 19Austria42 cities23.1
- 20Laos3 cities22.9
+ 25 more countries, 19.8 µg/m³ and below
- 39United States875 cities, was 2656.7
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Luxembourg since 21 Jan 2026, India since 13 Jan 2026, Senegal since 10 Jan 2026 and 5 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.