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 8 Oct 2026: Pakistan 57.2 µg/m³, India 38.8 µg/m³ and Nigeria 29.9 µg/m³.
- 1Pakistan15 cities57.2
- 2India132 cities38.8
- 3Nigeria3 cities29.9
- 4Malawi4 cities27.8
- 5Kazakhstan4 cities25.5
- 6Serbia8 cities24.1
- 7Ghana3 cities22.5
- 8Indonesia4 cities22.4
- 9Montenegro5 cities19.3
- 10Chile41 cities18.8
- 11Slovakia32 cities16.2
- 12Italy23 cities, was 3215.8
- 13Hungary10 cities15.5
- 14Romania10 cities15.3
- 15Thailand71 cities15.0
- 16Bosnia and Herzegovina3 cities14.1
- 17North Macedonia9 cities13.7
- 18Austria37 cities12.6
- 19South Africa36 cities12.5
- 20Taiwan42 cities12.1
+ 27 more countries, 11.2 µg/m³ and below
- 43United States697 cities5.4
Not counted on this day, too few cities measured: Philippines since 7 Oct 2026, Ireland since 6 Oct 2026, Portugal since 6 Oct 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.