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 30 days to 1 Oct 2026: Malawi 58.6 µg/m³, Pakistan 41.6 µg/m³ and Indonesia 35.5 µg/m³.
- 1Malawi5 cities58.6
- 2Pakistan15 cities41.6
- 3Indonesia4 cities35.5
- 4India229 cities25.1
- 5Chile47 cities23.3
- 6Philippines3 cities23.3
- 7South Africa36 cities18.4
- 8Montenegro5 cities16.7
- 9Ghana4 cities16.1
- 10Lebanon3 cities14.6
- 11Bosnia and Herzegovina5 cities14.2
- 12Serbia8 cities14.0
- 13Hong Kong12 cities13.7
- 14Kazakhstan5 cities13.6
- 15Mexico44 cities13.1
- 16Senegal4 cities11.8
- 17Taiwan44 cities11.8
- 18Thailand73 cities11.0
- 19North Macedonia15 cities10.6
- 20Italy17 cities10.2
+ 29 more countries, 10.1 µg/m³ and below
- 39United States899 cities5.5
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Nepal since 21 Sep 2026, Sweden since 13 Sep 2026, Latvia since 3 Sep 2026 and Malta since 12 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.