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 11 Feb 2026: Pakistan 152.8 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 144.2 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 77.3 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan11 cities152.8
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities144.2
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities77.3
- 4Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities72.1
- 5North Macedonia13 cities39.9
- 6Ghana4 cities38.2
- 7Poland59 cities37.6
- 8Montenegro5 cities36.0
- 9Thailand76 cities34.4
- 10Hungary13 cities29.2
- 11Romania29 cities27.5
- 12Hong Kong13 cities24.9
- 13Laos3 cities24.7
- 14Bulgaria7 cities24.2
- 15Latvia4 cities23.6
- 16South Korea140 cities21.6
- 17Philippines3 cities21.4
- 18Austria42 cities21.1
- 19Germany256 cities21.0
- 20The Netherlands37 cities20.9
+ 26 more countries, 19.1 µg/m³ and below
- 37United States878 cities7.7
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.