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 4 Jul 2026: Chile 48.8 µg/m³, Pakistan 31.3 µg/m³ and Malawi 27.5 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities48.8
- 2Pakistan14 cities31.3
- 3Malawi5 cities27.5
- 4India214 cities26.9
- 5Peru6 cities25.2
- 6Lebanon3 cities17.5
- 7New Zealand6 cities15.6
- 8Brazil6 cities14.9
- 9Mexico45 cities12.3
- 10Slovakia36 cities12.3
- 11Kazakhstan4 cities12.2
- 12South Korea134 cities11.9
- 13Malta3 cities11.9
- 14Serbia8 cities11.1
- 15Italy11 cities10.9
- 16Senegal3 cities10.9
- 17Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities10.5
- 18Thailand75 cities9.9
- 19Romania21 cities9.8
- 20Poland55 cities9.3
+ 20 more countries, 9.1 µg/m³ and below
- 29United States853 cities7.1
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Ireland since 27 Jun 2026, Belgium since 14 Jun 2026, Greece since 14 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.