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 5 Jul 2026: Chile 52.1 µg/m³, Pakistan 38.8 µg/m³ and Malawi 30.9 µg/m³.
- 1Chile45 cities52.1
- 2Pakistan14 cities38.8
- 3Malawi5 cities30.9
- 4Peru6 cities27.8
- 5Lebanon3 cities22.5
- 6New Zealand6 cities20.3
- 7India217 cities, was 22320.2
- 8Mexico46 cities15.5
- 9Kazakhstan4 cities15.1
- 10Brazil6 cities14.6
- 11Malta5 cities14.0
- 12Martinique3 cities13.6
- 13South Korea125 cities12.9
- 14Slovakia36 cities12.0
- 15Serbia8 cities11.9
- 16Romania25 cities, was 2711.5
- 17Greece12 cities11.4
- 18United States852 cities10.2
- 19Hungary11 cities, was 1310.0
- 20North Macedonia11 cities, was 1410.0
+ 25 more countries, 9.7 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Latvia since 4 Jul 2026, Norway since 4 Jul 2026, Thailand since 4 Jul 2026 and 6 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.