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 14 Jul 2026: Chile 43.9 µg/m³, Malawi 40.8 µg/m³ and Pakistan 31.9 µg/m³.
- 1Chile46 cities43.9
- 2Malawi5 cities40.8
- 3Pakistan13 cities31.9
- 4India214 cities, was 22326.8
- 5Lebanon3 cities17.4
- 6Martinique3 cities16.7
- 7Kazakhstan4 cities14.1
- 8Brazil26 cities13.2
- 9Spain56 cities13.0
- 10New Zealand6 cities12.9
- 11Mexico47 cities12.3
- 12Italy31 cities11.0
- 13Malta5 cities10.6
- 14France118 cities9.7
- 15United Kingdom6 cities9.5
- 16Japan564 cities9.5
- 17South Korea132 cities9.3
- 18Senegal4 cities9.1
- 19Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities9.0
- 20Serbia8 cities9.0
+ 24 more countries, the next at 8.4 µg/m³
- 25United States871 cities7.8
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 reader for China's network. Turkey's network doesn't answer requests from outside the country, so we can't read it. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.