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 30 days to 11 Aug 2026: Malawi 41.8 µg/m³, Pakistan 36.4 µg/m³ and Chile 29.1 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities41.8
- 2Pakistan13 cities36.4
- 3Chile46 cities29.1
- 4India204 cities22.1
- 5Lebanon3 cities21.0
- 6Nepal3 cities20.5
- 7New Zealand6 cities17.1
- 8Mexico47 cities16.1
- 9Malta4 cities15.8
- 10Italy32 cities13.5
- 11Kazakhstan4 cities12.8
- 12Martinique3 cities12.7
- 13Brazil6 cities12.1
- 14Canada118 cities11.9
- 15Slovakia40 cities11.5
- 16Bosnia and Herzegovina6 cities11.1
- 17Japan561 cities11.0
- 18Serbia8 cities11.0
- 19South Korea130 cities10.8
- 20United States860 cities10.6
+ 26 more countries, 10.3 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Peru since 17 Jul 2026, Thailand since 11 Jul 2026, Norway since 6 Jul 2026 and Greece since 14 Jun 2026.
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.