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 9 Feb 2026: Pakistan 120.8 µg/m³, Kazakhstan 53.3 µg/m³ and North Macedonia 35.9 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan13 cities120.8
- 2Kazakhstan4 cities53.3
- 3North Macedonia13 cities35.9
- 4Ghana4 cities33.1
- 5Poland59 cities30.4
- 6Laos3 cities27.8
- 7Thailand78 cities27.0
- 8Bulgaria7 cities25.6
- 9Montenegro5 cities25.3
- 10Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities22.9
- 11The Netherlands37 cities22.8
- 12South Korea140 cities22.0
- 13Romania28 cities21.3
- 14Hong Kong13 cities20.9
- 15Hungary13 cities20.9
- 16Germany257 cities19.1
- 17Taiwan44 cities18.6
- 18Latvia4 cities18.1
- 19Mexico47 cities17.9
- 20Austria42 cities17.2
+ 26 more countries, 16.8 µg/m³ and below
- 33United States877 cities8.6
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Kyrgyzstan since 9 Feb 2026, Philippines since 9 Feb 2026, India since 8 Feb 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.