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 5 Sep 2026: Malawi 77.8 µg/m³, Indonesia 38.1 µg/m³ and Pakistan 31.8 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi4 cities77.8
- 2Indonesia4 cities38.1
- 3Pakistan15 cities31.8
- 4Philippines3 cities26.2
- 5Chile47 cities24.6
- 6South Africa43 cities21.6
- 7India227 cities, was 21221.3
- 8Lebanon3 cities17.5
- 9Nepal3 cities17.0
- 10Montenegro4 cities16.9
- 11Kyrgyzstan3 cities16.6
- 12Mexico48 cities16.5
- 13Ghana5 cities16.4
- 14Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities14.9
- 15Kazakhstan5 cities13.6
- 16North Macedonia15 cities13.4
- 17Thailand75 cities12.1
- 18Italy30 cities11.9
- 19Greece8 cities11.1
- 20Serbia8 cities11.1
+ 30 more countries, 10.8 µg/m³ and below
- 27United States906 cities6.7
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 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.