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 10 Feb 2026: Pakistan 108.0 µg/m³, Kazakhstan 53.0 µg/m³ and India 52.1 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan13 cities108.0
- 2Kazakhstan4 cities53.0
- 3India199 cities52.1
- 4Poland60 cities31.4
- 5North Macedonia13 cities31.3
- 6Ghana4 cities29.6
- 7Laos3 cities27.5
- 8Thailand77 cities27.2
- 9Bulgaria7 cities24.5
- 10Montenegro5 cities23.3
- 11South Korea140 cities22.7
- 12Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities21.5
- 13Latvia4 cities20.5
- 14The Netherlands37 cities20.5
- 15Hong Kong13 cities20.3
- 16Hungary13 cities19.5
- 17Romania28 cities18.6
- 18Taiwan44 cities18.3
- 19Germany258 cities17.9
- 20Mexico44 cities17.4
+ 27 more countries, 16.8 µg/m³ and below
- 34United States875 cities8.6
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Kyrgyzstan since 9 Feb 2026, Philippines since 9 Feb 2026, Czechia since 30 Jan 2026 and 2 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.