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 4 Sep 2026: Malawi 73.1 µg/m³, Indonesia 41.4 µg/m³ and Pakistan 34.0 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi4 cities73.1
- 2Indonesia4 cities41.4
- 3Pakistan15 cities34.0
- 4Chile47 cities24.7
- 5South Africa43 cities22.5
- 6India210 cities, was 21221.0
- 7Lebanon3 cities18.8
- 8Nepal3 cities17.4
- 9Ghana5 cities17.2
- 10Montenegro4 cities16.1
- 11Mexico48 cities16.1
- 12Kyrgyzstan3 cities15.5
- 13Bosnia and Herzegovina4 cities14.7
- 14Kazakhstan5 cities14.3
- 15North Macedonia15 cities13.9
- 16Italy31 cities12.3
- 17Greece9 cities12.2
- 18Serbia8 cities12.1
- 19Thailand75 cities11.7
- 20Spain37 cities, was 4210.4
+ 29 more countries, 10.0 µg/m³ and below
- 28United States892 cities6.9
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Sweden since 4 Sep 2026, Latvia since 3 Sep 2026, Martinique since 2 Sep 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.