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 11 Aug 2026: Malawi 51.8 µg/m³, Pakistan 35.8 µg/m³ and Chile 31.6 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities51.8
- 2Pakistan14 cities35.8
- 3Chile47 cities31.6
- 4Lebanon3 cities25.9
- 5India211 cities20.9
- 6Nepal3 cities20.4
- 7Martinique3 cities20.3
- 8Hong Kong12 cities16.6
- 9Mexico37 cities15.8
- 10Italy32 cities14.7
- 11Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities14.5
- 12New Zealand6 cities14.3
- 13Slovakia40 cities13.5
- 14Kazakhstan4 cities13.3
- 15Montenegro4 cities13.1
- 16Serbia8 cities13.0
- 17Brazil6 cities12.3
- 18North Macedonia14 cities12.3
- 19Taiwan42 cities12.3
- 20Romania26 cities, was 712.2
+ 28 more countries, 11.5 µg/m³ and below
- 26United States859 cities9.2
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Malta since 7 Aug 2026, Luxembourg since 6 Aug 2026, Ghana since 20 Jul 2026 and 3 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.