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 24 Jan 2026: Kyrgyzstan 242.3 µg/m³, Pakistan 179.6 µg/m³ and Bosnia and Herzegovina 95.9 µg/m³.
- 1Kyrgyzstan3 cities242.3
- 2Pakistan11 cities179.6
- 3Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities95.9
- 4Kazakhstan4 cities94.6
- 5Montenegro5 cities59.9
- 6Poland64 cities57.9
- 7North Macedonia13 cities50.7
- 8Romania29 cities43.6
- 9Hungary13 cities41.6
- 10Czechia42 cities, was 939.5
- 11Ghana4 cities38.6
- 12Bulgaria7 cities34.5
- 13Thailand78 cities31.2
- 14Slovenia11 cities30.4
- 15Philippines3 cities30.0
- 16Latvia4 cities29.7
- 17Germany255 cities28.9
- 18Hong Kong13 cities28.6
- 19Austria42 cities27.3
- 20Chile45 cities26.6
+ 27 more countries, 23.9 µg/m³ and below
- 38United States874 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 3 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.