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 13 Jul 2026: Chile 47.8 µg/m³, Malawi 34.9 µg/m³ and Pakistan 32.5 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities47.8
- 2Malawi5 cities34.9
- 3Pakistan13 cities32.5
- 4India213 cities, was 22325.5
- 5Lebanon3 cities17.9
- 6Martinique3 cities15.6
- 7Kazakhstan4 cities13.8
- 8Spain52 cities13.3
- 9New Zealand6 cities12.2
- 10Mexico49 cities12.1
- 11Brazil6 cities10.9
- 12Italy31 cities10.4
- 13Malta5 cities9.9
- 14South Korea131 cities9.5
- 15United Kingdom6 cities8.9
- 16Japan563 cities8.8
- 17Serbia8 cities8.8
- 18Senegal4 cities8.8
- 19Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities8.2
- 20France117 cities8.2
+ 24 more countries, 7.7 µg/m³ and below
- 25United States855 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.