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 10 Mar 2026: Pakistan 73.9 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 62.3 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 50.8 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan14 cities73.9
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities62.3
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities50.8
- 4India216 cities, was 23948.5
- 5Poland60 cities32.9
- 6North Macedonia15 cities30.9
- 7Montenegro5 cities30.4
- 8Laos3 cities30.2
- 9Thailand84 cities29.6
- 10Ghana4 cities28.1
- 11Switzerland10 cities27.8
- 12Hungary13 cities27.5
- 13The Netherlands37 cities27.3
- 14Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities26.5
- 15Belgium51 cities24.6
- 16Romania28 cities24.5
- 17Mexico52 cities23.5
- 18South Korea141 cities22.5
- 19Latvia4 cities21.7
- 20Germany255 cities21.5
+ 28 more countries, 20.5 µg/m³ and below
- 39United States870 cities6.7
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Czechia since 25 Feb 2026, Spain since 11 Feb 2026 and Martinique since 30 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.