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 21 Feb 2026: Pakistan 112.7 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 98.5 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 75.1 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan11 cities112.7
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities98.5
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities75.1
- 4India194 cities54.8
- 5Ghana4 cities34.5
- 6North Macedonia13 cities32.2
- 7Thailand80 cities31.9
- 8Poland58 cities29.1
- 9Laos3 cities26.7
- 10Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities25.3
- 11Montenegro5 cities23.8
- 12South Korea140 cities23.4
- 13Hong Kong13 cities22.9
- 14Hungary13 cities22.0
- 15Latvia4 cities21.4
- 16Romania29 cities21.3
- 17Mexico37 cities19.6
- 18The Netherlands37 cities19.3
- 19Senegal3 cities18.8
- 20Germany255 cities17.7
+ 28 more countries, 17.4 µg/m³ and below
- 38United States872 cities8.3
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Spain since 18 Feb 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.