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 6 Sep 2026: Malawi 80.7 µg/m³, Indonesia 35.9 µg/m³ and Pakistan 32.5 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi4 cities80.7
- 2Indonesia4 cities35.9
- 3Pakistan15 cities32.5
- 4Chile47 cities24.4
- 5Philippines3 cities23.9
- 6India233 cities, was 21221.2
- 7South Africa43 cities20.5
- 8Nepal3 cities20.3
- 9Lebanon3 cities19.1
- 10Kyrgyzstan3 cities16.6
- 11Montenegro4 cities16.5
- 12Mexico47 cities16.2
- 13Kazakhstan5 cities15.3
- 14Ghana5 cities14.7
- 15Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities13.7
- 16North Macedonia15 cities12.8
- 17Thailand75 cities12.3
- 18Italy30 cities11.4
- 19Serbia8 cities11.1
- 20Greece8 cities10.9
+ 30 more countries, 10.5 µg/m³ and below
- 31United States904 cities6.3
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.