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 30 days to 10 Feb 2026: Pakistan 157.2 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 148.1 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 79.0 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan11 cities157.2
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities148.1
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities79.0
- 4Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities73.5
- 5North Macedonia13 cities40.0
- 6Ghana4 cities38.6
- 7Poland59 cities37.7
- 8Montenegro5 cities36.8
- 9Thailand76 cities34.4
- 10Hungary13 cities29.7
- 11Romania29 cities27.5
- 12Hong Kong13 cities25.4
- 13Laos3 cities24.3
- 14Bulgaria7 cities24.2
- 15Latvia4 cities23.3
- 16Philippines3 cities21.7
- 17Austria42 cities21.4
- 18Germany255 cities20.9
- 19The Netherlands37 cities20.9
- 20South Korea140 cities20.4
+ 26 more countries, 20.2 µg/m³ and below
- 37United States882 cities7.6
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: India since 20 Jan 2026, Senegal since 17 Jan 2026, Slovakia since 9 Jan 2026 and Czechia since 7 Jan 2026.
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.