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 23 Jul 2026: Malawi 45.3 µg/m³, Pakistan 29.5 µg/m³ and Lebanon 26.1 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities45.3
- 2Pakistan12 cities29.5
- 3Lebanon3 cities26.1
- 4Chile44 cities25.9
- 5Malta5 cities22.6
- 6India211 cities, was 22321.8
- 7New Zealand6 cities20.8
- 8Mexico50 cities17.2
- 9Nepal3 cities15.2
- 10Japan553 cities14.1
- 11Kazakhstan4 cities13.3
- 12Canada117 cities12.5
- 13South Korea135 cities12.2
- 14Serbia8 cities11.8
- 15Italy31 cities11.4
- 16Montenegro5 cities11.4
- 17North Macedonia13 cities, was 1411.4
- 18United States860 cities11.3
- 19Martinique3 cities10.5
- 20Brazil6 cities10.0
+ 23 more countries, 9.8 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Bosnia and Herzegovina since 22 Jul 2026, Estonia since 22 Jul 2026, Spain since 22 Jul 2026 and 10 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.