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 8 Aug 2026: Malawi 44.2 µg/m³, Pakistan 33.9 µg/m³ and Chile 27.9 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities44.2
- 2Pakistan14 cities33.9
- 3Chile47 cities27.9
- 4Lebanon3 cities24.4
- 5Nepal3 cities23.9
- 6India195 cities21.0
- 7New Zealand6 cities17.2
- 8Brazil6 cities17.0
- 9Mexico48 cities15.9
- 10Slovakia38 cities15.6
- 11Italy30 cities15.1
- 12Kazakhstan4 cities13.6
- 13Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities13.5
- 14Romania19 cities, was 713.2
- 15South Korea129 cities12.3
- 16Montenegro4 cities12.2
- 17Hong Kong10 cities12.1
- 18Serbia8 cities12.1
- 19Hungary10 cities, was 412.0
- 20North Macedonia14 cities10.9
+ 27 more countries, 10.9 µg/m³ and below
- 27United States858 cities8.9
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Lithuania since 7 Aug 2026, Malta since 7 Aug 2026, Luxembourg since 6 Aug 2026 and 4 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.