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 11 Feb 2026: Pakistan 104.8 µg/m³, India 52.3 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 49.3 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan13 cities104.8
- 2India226 cities52.3
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities49.3
- 4Poland58 cities31.0
- 5North Macedonia13 cities29.0
- 6Ghana4 cities28.8
- 7Thailand78 cities28.8
- 8Laos3 cities27.4
- 9South Korea140 cities22.9
- 10Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities22.2
- 11Bulgaria7 cities22.2
- 12Latvia4 cities22.2
- 13Hungary13 cities20.7
- 14Montenegro5 cities19.9
- 15The Netherlands37 cities19.4
- 16Mexico44 cities18.8
- 17Hong Kong13 cities18.7
- 18Taiwan44 cities18.3
- 19Romania28 cities18.0
- 20Peru6 cities17.4
+ 26 more countries, 16.1 µg/m³ and below
- 35United States879 cities8.4
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Spain since 11 Feb 2026, Kyrgyzstan since 9 Feb 2026, Philippines since 9 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.