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.

The 7 days to9 Sep 2026 That day's board

The worst cities for PM2.5 over the 7 days to 9 Sep 2026: Palembang 153.7 µg/m³, Kinshasa 79.2 µg/m³ and Kuala Lumpur 78.7 µg/m³.

  1. 1PalembangIndonesia153.7
  2. 2KinshasaDemocratic Republic of the Congo79.2
  3. 3Kuala LumpurMalaysia78.7
  4. 4PanipatIndia72.5
  5. 5NeelankaraiIndia69.2
  6. 6CoyhaiqueChile68.9
  7. 7BlantyreMalawi67.5
  8. 8BhāgalpurIndia67.4
  9. 9LilongweMalawi64.9
  10. 10BawānaIndia63.8
  11. 11GujranwalaPakistan63.7
  12. 12KampalaUganda62.4
  13. 13Puerto VarasChile61.2
  14. 14ZombaMalawi60.0
  15. 15Puerto MonttChile59.9
  16. 16GummidipundiIndia59.3
  17. 17JīndIndia57.7
  18. 18ChāpraIndia55.5
  19. 19PeshawarPakistan54.4
  20. 20PithampurIndia53.1

+ 3,149 more cities, 52.9 µg/m³ and below

Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Kannur since 8 Sep 2026, Fatehābād since 7 Sep 2026, Vanderbijlpark since 3 Sep 2026 and 6 more cities.

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.