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 16 Jun 2026: Chile 51.4 µg/m³, Pakistan 32.3 µg/m³ and India 31.1 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities51.4
- 2Pakistan13 cities32.3
- 3India227 cities31.1
- 4Peru6 cities26.1
- 5Malawi5 cities21.5
- 6Lebanon3 cities14.7
- 7Mexico45 cities14.6
- 8South Korea134 cities14.0
- 9Senegal4 cities14.0
- 10New Zealand6 cities13.2
- 11Kazakhstan4 cities11.9
- 12Thailand78 cities11.6
- 13Brazil6 cities11.0
- 14Malta4 cities10.8
- 15Serbia8 cities9.6
- 16Hungary4 cities, was 139.5
- 17Italy17 cities, was 99.5
- 18Taiwan44 cities9.5
- 19North Macedonia6 cities9.1
- 20Japan569 cities8.0
+ 20 more countries, 7.9 µg/m³ and below
- 29United States849 cities5.8
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Belgium since 14 Jun 2026, Greece since 14 Jun 2026, Estonia since 13 Jun 2026 and 8 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.