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 13 Feb 2026: Pakistan 144.1 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 142.8 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 76.2 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan11 cities144.1
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities142.8
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities76.2
- 4Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities66.7
- 5India124 cities56.8
- 6North Macedonia13 cities37.2
- 7Ghana4 cities37.1
- 8Poland58 cities36.0
- 9Thailand78 cities34.0
- 10Montenegro5 cities33.1
- 11Hungary13 cities27.7
- 12Romania29 cities27.4
- 13Laos3 cities25.2
- 14Hong Kong13 cities24.1
- 15South Korea140 cities24.0
- 16Bulgaria7 cities23.7
- 17Latvia4 cities23.3
- 18Germany256 cities20.7
- 19The Netherlands37 cities20.7
- 20Philippines3 cities20.2
+ 27 more countries, 19.9 µg/m³ and below
- 37United States877 cities7.8
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Malawi since 13 Feb 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.