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 21 Jun 2026: Chile 49.5 µg/m³, Pakistan 29.5 µg/m³ and India 27.9 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities49.5
- 2Pakistan14 cities29.5
- 3India230 cities27.9
- 4Malawi5 cities26.8
- 5Peru6 cities21.2
- 6Kazakhstan4 cities13.4
- 7South Korea129 cities12.5
- 8Lebanon3 cities12.2
- 9Italy41 cities, was 3912.1
- 10New Zealand6 cities11.8
- 11Slovakia41 cities11.6
- 12Mexico44 cities11.4
- 13Hungary4 cities, was 1310.8
- 14Senegal3 cities10.7
- 15Serbia8 cities10.3
- 16Thailand78 cities10.3
- 17Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities9.8
- 18Malta4 cities9.5
- 19Switzerland3 cities, was 119.4
- 20Germany99 cities, was 2539.3
+ 23 more countries, 9.2 µg/m³ and below
- 33United States832 cities4.8
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Greece since 9 Jun 2026, Estonia since 8 Jun 2026, France since 8 Jun 2026 and 7 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.