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 12 Feb 2026: Pakistan 149.0 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 144.5 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 76.1 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan11 cities149.0
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities144.5
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities76.1
- 4Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities69.8
- 5North Macedonia13 cities38.8
- 6Ghana4 cities37.7
- 7Poland59 cities37.4
- 8Montenegro5 cities35.4
- 9Thailand77 cities34.4
- 10Hungary13 cities28.4
- 11Romania29 cities27.9
- 12Laos3 cities25.0
- 13Bulgaria7 cities24.3
- 14Hong Kong13 cities24.1
- 15Latvia4 cities23.4
- 16South Korea140 cities22.5
- 17Germany256 cities20.9
- 18The Netherlands37 cities20.8
- 19Philippines3 cities20.7
- 20Austria42 cities20.4
+ 27 more countries, 18.5 µg/m³ and below
- 37United States877 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.