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 12 Sep 2026: Malawi 48.5 µg/m³, Pakistan 41.6 µg/m³ and Montenegro 31.7 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities48.5
- 2Pakistan15 cities41.6
- 3Montenegro5 cities31.7
- 4Nepal3 cities27.9
- 5Indonesia4 cities27.8
- 6Chile48 cities25.7
- 7Nigeria3 cities24.1
- 8India224 cities, was 21223.6
- 9Lebanon3 cities21.2
- 10South Africa42 cities17.8
- 11Hong Kong12 cities16.0
- 12Kazakhstan5 cities15.2
- 13North Macedonia14 cities14.0
- 14Mexico44 cities13.8
- 15Serbia6 cities13.3
- 16Senegal3 cities12.4
- 17Thailand75 cities10.9
- 18Taiwan44 cities10.7
- 19Greece3 cities9.7
- 20Colombia4 cities9.5
+ 26 more countries, the next at 8.5 µg/m³
- 35United States878 cities5.5
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Ghana since 11 Sep 2026, Kyrgyzstan since 11 Sep 2026, Philippines since 11 Sep 2026 and 8 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 reader for China's network. Turkey's network doesn't answer requests from outside the country, so we can't read it. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.