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 13 Feb 2026: Pakistan 100.1 µg/m³, India 52.4 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 42.8 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan12 cities100.1
- 2India230 cities52.4
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities42.8
- 4Thailand80 cities30.6
- 5Ghana4 cities28.1
- 6Poland59 cities27.6
- 7Laos3 cities27.3
- 8South Korea140 cities27.1
- 9Romania28 cities24.7
- 10North Macedonia13 cities22.9
- 11Latvia4 cities22.8
- 12Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities22.3
- 13Bulgaria7 cities20.0
- 14Hong Kong13 cities20.0
- 15Mexico36 cities20.0
- 16Hungary12 cities19.3
- 17Montenegro5 cities19.1
- 18Taiwan44 cities17.8
- 19Peru6 cities16.9
- 20Chile39 cities16.7
+ 27 more countries, 14.1 µg/m³ and below
- 36United States861 cities7.7
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Spain since 11 Feb 2026, Kyrgyzstan since 9 Feb 2026, Czechia since 30 Jan 2026 and 2 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.