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 14 Sep 2026: Malawi 47.7 µg/m³, Pakistan 44.2 µg/m³ and Montenegro 31.5 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities47.7
- 2Pakistan14 cities44.2
- 3Montenegro5 cities31.5
- 4Indonesia4 cities29.2
- 5Chile47 cities25.5
- 6Nigeria3 cities24.5
- 7India218 cities, was 21223.0
- 8South Africa40 cities21.5
- 9Lebanon3 cities20.9
- 10Hong Kong12 cities14.3
- 11Serbia7 cities14.2
- 12North Macedonia14 cities14.0
- 13Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities13.1
- 14Mexico43 cities12.4
- 15Thailand74 cities12.2
- 16Kazakhstan5 cities12.1
- 17Senegal4 cities12.0
- 18Taiwan44 cities11.8
- 19South Korea130 cities10.1
- 20New Zealand6 cities9.3
+ 27 more countries, 8.3 µg/m³ and below
- 33United States880 cities5.4
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Nepal since 14 Sep 2026, Ghana since 11 Sep 2026, Kyrgyzstan since 11 Sep 2026 and 6 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.