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 7 Sep 2026: Malawi 79.1 µg/m³, Pakistan 33.5 µg/m³ and Indonesia 32.6 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities79.1
- 2Pakistan15 cities33.5
- 3Indonesia4 cities32.6
- 4Chile47 cities25.1
- 5Nepal3 cities24.1
- 6India230 cities, was 21222.0
- 7Lebanon3 cities21.2
- 8South Africa38 cities20.0
- 9Kyrgyzstan3 cities17.6
- 10Philippines3 cities17.5
- 11Kazakhstan5 cities16.9
- 12Mexico48 cities15.1
- 13Ghana5 cities15.0
- 14Montenegro4 cities14.3
- 15Thailand75 cities12.2
- 16Hong Kong11 cities11.8
- 17North Macedonia15 cities11.6
- 18Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities11.3
- 19Italy28 cities11.3
- 20Spain69 cities, was 4210.6
+ 30 more countries, 10.3 µg/m³ and below
- 31United States903 cities5.9
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 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.