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 12 Feb 2026: Pakistan 99.3 µg/m³, India 52.7 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 43.0 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan12 cities99.3
- 2India225 cities52.7
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities43.0
- 4Thailand79 cities30.4
- 5Ghana4 cities29.4
- 6Poland58 cities29.3
- 7Laos3 cities27.4
- 8North Macedonia13 cities26.6
- 9Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities23.3
- 10Latvia4 cities22.9
- 11South Korea140 cities22.8
- 12Romania28 cities22.6
- 13Hungary12 cities21.5
- 14Montenegro5 cities21.1
- 15Bulgaria7 cities20.8
- 16Mexico44 cities20.0
- 17Hong Kong13 cities19.0
- 18Taiwan44 cities17.8
- 19Peru6 cities17.5
- 20Chile40 cities16.3
+ 26 more countries, 15.0 µg/m³ and below
- 35United States872 cities7.9
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.