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 21 Jul 2026: Malawi 45.6 µg/m³, Pakistan 31.5 µg/m³ and Chile 26.8 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities45.6
- 2Pakistan12 cities31.5
- 3Chile44 cities26.8
- 4Lebanon3 cities24.0
- 5India221 cities, was 22323.7
- 6New Zealand6 cities19.7
- 7Malta5 cities18.7
- 8Nepal3 cities18.6
- 9Mexico49 cities16.9
- 10Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities14.6
- 11Serbia8 cities13.6
- 12Japan561 cities13.5
- 13United Kingdom5 cities13.3
- 14South Korea132 cities13.2
- 15Kazakhstan4 cities12.6
- 16North Macedonia13 cities, was 1412.6
- 17Italy32 cities12.4
- 18Canada117 cities12.2
- 19Montenegro5 cities12.2
- 20United States865 cities12.0
+ 26 more countries, 11.4 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Ghana since 20 Jul 2026, Philippines since 19 Jul 2026, Greece since 11 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.