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 10 Sep 2026: Malawi 52.5 µg/m³, Pakistan 38.2 µg/m³ and Montenegro 33.3 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities52.5
- 2Pakistan15 cities38.2
- 3Montenegro5 cities33.3
- 4Nepal3 cities31.5
- 5Indonesia5 cities27.7
- 6Chile47 cities26.4
- 7Nigeria3 cities25.5
- 8India231 cities, was 21223.0
- 9Lebanon3 cities21.1
- 10Kyrgyzstan3 cities19.5
- 11Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities17.1
- 12South Africa38 cities16.8
- 13Ghana5 cities15.3
- 14Hong Kong12 cities15.0
- 15Kazakhstan5 cities14.2
- 16Philippines3 cities14.0
- 17Mexico47 cities13.9
- 18Senegal4 cities13.9
- 19Martinique3 cities13.4
- 20North Macedonia14 cities12.0
+ 32 more countries, 11.9 µg/m³ and below
- 35United States884 cities5.5
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Sweden since 4 Sep 2026, Latvia since 3 Sep 2026, Lithuania since 12 Aug 2026 and Malta since 7 Aug 2026.
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.