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 12 Mar 2026: Pakistan 100.3 µg/m³, Kyrgyzstan 64.5 µg/m³ and Kazakhstan 52.5 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan13 cities100.3
- 2Kyrgyzstan3 cities64.5
- 3Kazakhstan4 cities52.5
- 4India220 cities47.2
- 5Laos3 cities32.9
- 6Ghana4 cities28.6
- 7Thailand84 cities28.6
- 8North Macedonia13 cities27.5
- 9Poland58 cities25.5
- 10Latvia4 cities23.7
- 11Romania28 cities23.3
- 12Montenegro5 cities23.0
- 13South Korea141 cities22.2
- 14Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities22.0
- 15Hungary13 cities20.6
- 16Mexico48 cities20.3
- 17Senegal3 cities20.1
- 18Hong Kong13 cities19.8
- 19Philippines3 cities18.1
- 20Chile43 cities17.6
+ 28 more countries, 17.6 µg/m³ and below
- 41United States876 cities7.1
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Spain since 18 Feb 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.