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 12 Jul 2026: Chile 51.4 µg/m³, Pakistan 34.9 µg/m³ and Malawi 31.4 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities51.4
- 2Pakistan13 cities34.9
- 3Malawi5 cities31.4
- 4India210 cities, was 22323.5
- 5Lebanon3 cities18.4
- 6Martinique3 cities14.0
- 7Kazakhstan4 cities13.9
- 8Spain26 cities13.4
- 9Mexico48 cities12.2
- 10Brazil6 cities11.7
- 11New Zealand6 cities11.4
- 12Italy31 cities10.3
- 13Malta5 cities9.7
- 14South Korea129 cities9.6
- 15Senegal4 cities9.3
- 16Serbia8 cities9.0
- 17Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities8.1
- 18United Kingdom7 cities8.1
- 19Japan559 cities7.9
- 20Canada114 cities7.6
+ 24 more countries, 7.6 µg/m³ and below
- 23United States853 cities7.4
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Greece since 11 Jul 2026, Lithuania since 11 Jul 2026, Peru since 10 Jul 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.