SmogRank / History / City race

Cities, worst air first, day by day

Each measured city's average over the 30 days to every day since January 2023, worst first. Find your own city to follow it through the race, or keep to one country.

CountriesCities
The 7 days to2 Sep 2026 That day's board

The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 2 Sep 2026: Palembang 127.0 µg/m³, Vanderbijlpark 108.0 µg/m³ and Blantyre 71.5 µg/m³.

  1. 1PalembangIndonesia127.0
  2. 2VanderbijlparkSouth Africa108.0
  3. 3BlantyreMalawi71.5
  4. 4KinshasaDemocratic Republic of the Congo66.0
  5. 5ZombaMalawi65.3
  6. 6Kuala LumpurMalaysia61.9
  7. 7GujranwalaPakistan56.9
  8. 8DushanbeTajikistan54.5
  9. 9CoyhaiqueChile53.7
  10. 10CarolinaSouth Africa52.1
  11. 11eManzimtotiSouth Africa51.2
  12. 12KampalaUganda46.3
  13. 13DubaiUnited Arab Emirates46.2
  14. 14TabananIndonesia45.7
  15. 15VereenigingSouth Africa45.0
  16. 16PeshawarPakistan44.2
  17. 17UbudIndonesia44.0
  18. 18LahorePakistan43.6
  19. 19LeslieSouth Africa42.9
  20. 20JammuIndia42.4

+ 2,844 more cities, 42.1 µg/m³ and below

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Marapong since 2 Sep 2026, Karonga since 31 Aug 2026, Tijuana since 31 Aug 2026 and 30 more cities.

30 days7 days
GoodModerateSensitive groupsUnhealthyVery unhealthyHazardousWHO 24-hour guideline, 15 µg/m³Fades where it stood: not counted that day

A city's number is its average over the 30 days, shown only when 21 of them were measured (5 of 7 on the 7-day race), the same minimum as the 30- and 7-day boards. A city whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air. 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.