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 worst cities for PM2.5 over the 30 days to 19 Sep 2026: Kinshasa 77.3 µg/m³, Panipat 72.7 µg/m³ and Kuala Lumpur 72.4 µg/m³.
- 1KinshasaDemocratic Republic of the Congo77.3
- 2PanipatIndia72.7
- 3Kuala LumpurMalaysia72.4
- 4CoyhaiqueChile72.4
- 5BlantyreMalawi69.4
- 6LilongweMalawi67.4
- 7MānesarIndia60.5
- 8JīndIndia59.7
- 9GujranwalaPakistan58.6
- 10KampalaUganda58.2
- 11ZombaMalawi56.2
- 12GobindgarhIndia54.8
- 13DispurIndia54.3
- 14Yamuna NagarIndia53.3
- 15PithampurIndia52.4
- 16BhiwadiIndia52.2
- 17NoidaIndia51.6
- 18Puerto VarasChile51.4
- 19BhāgalpurIndia50.7
- 20PeshawarPakistan50.4
+ 3,057 more cities, 49.1 µg/m³ and below
Not counted on this day, too few days measured: Palembang since 18 Sep 2026, Sasarām since 17 Sep 2026, Gummidipundi since 16 Sep 2026 and 3 more cities.
Cities counted each 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.