Air quality in Tbilisi by district: what the 2025 data show

How clean is the air in each Tbilisi district?

The table brings together the official air measurements for each of Tbilisi's 10 districts. Fine particles (PM2.5 and PM10) are measured only at five automatic stations, in four districts. Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), mostly from traffic, is measured at 29 indicative sampling points spread across all districts. The 2025 figures come from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture's monitoring report on the Tbilisi air plan, read from its charts.

By our arithmetic from 2014 census figures, the four districts with an automatic station were home to about 41% of the city's residents; the other six, with about 59%, have no official particle measurement at all.

Where do these figures come from?

The National Environmental Agency runs the monitoring network and publishes live readings on air.gov.ge, but we found no stand-alone annual air report for 2024 or 2025; a 2023 assessment by the Czech NGO Arnika and Georgia's Green Pole found that the agency's annual reports stopped in 2017. The citable annual figures are in the ministry's yearly monitoring reports on the 2024-2026 Tbilisi air quality plan, which show each station's annual mean and each sampling point's NO2 in charts. We read the values from those charts, so particle figures are whole numbers and NO2 readings may be off by about 1 µg/m³.

The NO2 points are passive samplers, small tubes exposed for 14 days at a time, which give indicative rather than reference measurements. They also measure ozone at up to 7 points and benzene at 5. Low-cost citizen sensors exist, but on 22 October 2026 only three were reporting from Tbilisi on the sensor.community network, too few to use.

What do the automatic stations show?

Georgian law allows 35 days a year with PM10 above 50 µg/m³. In 2025 four stations exceeded that, but the ministry attributes most of those days to desert and other dust carried in from outside the country: 54 of 68 days at Tsereteli Avenue, 35 of 37 at Kazbegi Avenue, 57 of 63 at Gelovani Avenue and 99 of 113 at Ilia's Garden. Such episodes hit the whole city at once.

Ilia's Garden was the only station above the Georgian annual limits in 2025, and it also recorded 38 days of high ozone. The ministry says it is unrepresentative because of commercial heating and cooking around it, and plans to move it, so Chughureti's figures should be read with care. At Tsereteli Avenue, PM10 fell from 64 in 2023, when road works ran next to the station, to 38 in 2025.

Where is nitrogen dioxide highest?

NO2 is a street problem. In 2025, 12 of the 29 sampling points had an annual mean above the 40 µg/m³ limit, down from 15 in 2024, and 11 of the 12 stood beside roads. The highest were Javakheti Street in Varketili (74), Rustaveli Avenue (68), Ketevan Tsamebuli Avenue (61), Pekini Avenue (55), Melikishvili Avenue (53) and Tsotne Dadiani Street (52). The lowest were Lisi Lake (15), Vake Park (17), Dighomi Park (24) and Krtsanisi Garden (26). NO2 fell at 24 of the 29 points between 2024 and 2025.

The difference inside a district is often larger than between districts. By our calculation, street points averaged about 50 µg/m³ in 2025 against about 29 at parks, gardens, lakes and schools. In Vake the range ran from 17 in Vake Park to 50 on Abashidze Street, and in Saburtalo from 15 at Lisi Lake to 55 on Pekini Avenue. That is why we do not rank districts: whether your windows face a main road matters more than which district you are in.

What do the latest 12 months and the seasons show?

The agency's live data on air.gov.ge can be downloaded hour by hour. We did that for January 2024 to September 2026 and checked our method against the university's published 2024 figures, which it matched within about half a microgram. These are the values as published on the site, not validated annual reports, so the official figures above take priority.

The WHO daily guideline for PM2.5 is 15 µg/m³; the counts are out of 291 days with valid data. Winter is the difficult season: from December 2024 to February 2025, PM2.5 averaged 26.6 at Tsereteli Avenue and 24.6 at Gelovani Avenue, against 11.6 and 10.3 in the following summer. November 2025 was the worst month in the series, with monthly means between 29.6 and 45.1 at all five stations at once, a citywide episode whose cause we could not find. April to July 2026 were the cleanest months, with PM2.5 of 5 to 10 everywhere.

Coarser dust behaves differently. At Kazbegi Avenue, PM10 was the same in summer 2025 as in the winter before, and at Varketili it was higher in summer, which points to construction, roads and dry weather rather than heating.

What about ozone and other pollutants?

Ozone forms in sunlight and is often higher away from traffic, because exhaust gases break it down near busy roads. The air plan notes that at Varketili the summer ozone indicator exceeded the WHO-based level in most years. In the official 2025 report, all 38 days above the Georgian ozone standard were recorded at Ilia's Garden, which the ministry links to new local sources near the station. Sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and benzene showed no exceedances in 2024 or 2025, and results for heavy metals and benzo(a)pyrene from those years were still being analysed in 2026.

One more gap matters for buyers: three of the five automatic stations have no valid recent annual figure for NO2. Gelovani Avenue and Ilia's Garden publish no NO2 at all on the site, Varketili's analyser had too little data in 2024, and the Tsereteli Avenue analyser gave faulty readings from July to December 2025. The passive samplers are therefore the main source on traffic pollution.

What causes the pollution?

According to the ministry's emission inventory, construction and demolition produce about 59% of fine-particle (PM2.5) emissions in the Tbilisi area and 84% of PM10, though the construction estimate is uncertain by a factor of up to four. Traffic produces about 31% of PM2.5 and 62% of nitrogen oxides, and home heating 23% of nitrogen oxides. The ministry's 2025 report links high NO2 to an "outdated vehicle fleet and the growing number of vehicles": Tbilisi had 882,418 registered vehicles in 2025, 18% more than a year earlier.

Where building is heaviest, there are usually no particle monitors. In the first seven months of 2026 the largest permit pipelines were in Saburtalo district, mainly Didi Dighomi, and in Nadzaladevi, Krtsanisi, Gldani and Samgori, according to Galt & Taggart; only Saburtalo and Samgori have a station. Season matters too: by our calculation from the agency's hourly data, winter PM2.5 at every station is roughly double the summer level, and November 2025 was the worst month since January 2024.

How do the figures compare with health guidelines?

By our arithmetic, PM2.5 at every station was 3 to 4 times the WHO guideline and above the EU's 2030 limit, even where Georgian law was met. Only Lisi Lake and Vake Park had NO2 below 20 µg/m³. The trend is downwards: the three long-running stations averaged about 20.6 µg/m³ of PM2.5 in 2017, according to Tbilisi State University researchers, and about 17 in 2025 by our arithmetic from the ministry's figures.

What is being done?

• The plan. The government's 2024-2026 air quality plan for Tbilisi had 41 measures and was 41% delivered by the end of 2025, by the ministry's own count.
• Construction dust. Inspectors found 39 dust-rule violations on building sites and 284 on the storage and transport of dusty materials in 2025, and issued 227 fines for uncovered loads. Fines under the Administrative Offences Code run from GEL 200 to 5,000 for individuals and GEL 500 to 15,000 for companies, depending on the offence and repeat.
• Vehicles. A ban on importing cars older than 6 years, announced in February 2026, was replaced before it took effect: from 2 April 2026 such cars pay an import excise of GEL 4.50 per cm³ of engine, three times the GEL 1.50 charged on newer cars. Bus lanes and paid parking were extended to more streets in 2024 and 2025.
• Greening. The ministry reports 74,393 trees planted in 2024 and 451,665 in 2025.

What does this mean for a buyer?

Look at the street before the district. A flat facing a main road such as Rustaveli, Ketevan Tsamebuli or Pekini Avenue sits where NO2 readings exceed the limit, while flats by Lisi Lake, Vake Park or other green spaces have some of the lowest readings in the city. A building site next door brings dust for years, and some parts of the city have several at once. Winter is the worst season everywhere. For hillside areas such as Tskneti, Okrokana and Bagebi there is no measurement of any kind, so claims of cleaner air there rest on elevation, not data. Our neighbourhoods comparison and guide for families bring air data together with prices and schools.

Checking the air around a flat step by step

1. Find the nearest point

   Station or sampler on air.gov.ge.

2. Check the street

   Main road, bus route or quiet side street.

3. Look for building sites

   Permits and cranes nearby.

4. Visit in winter

   The season with the highest particles.

5. Ask about windows

   Which rooms face the road.

6. Consider a purifier

   For bedrooms on a busy street.

Frequently asked questions

Which district of Tbilisi has the cleanest air?

There is not enough data to rank districts; the lowest NO2 points are Lisi Lake and Vake Park.

How many air stations does Tbilisi have?

Five automatic stations, in Saburtalo, Didube, Samgori and Chughureti, plus 29 NO2 samplers.

Does Tbilisi meet air quality limits?

Mostly the Georgian ones, but PM2.5 is 3 to 4 times the WHO guideline.

Where is nitrogen dioxide highest?

On Javakheti Street in Varketili, Rustaveli Avenue and Ketevan Tsamebuli Avenue in 2025.

Is the air worse in winter?

Yes; fine particles roughly double compared with summer.

What causes the dust?

Mainly construction, plus traffic and dust blown in from outside Georgia.

Is the air better in the hills?

Possibly, but Tskneti, Okrokana and Bagebi have no monitoring.

Is air quality improving?

Slowly: NO2 fell at 24 of 29 points in 2025, and PM2.5 has fallen since 2017.

Sources

1. Tbilisi air quality management plan, 2025 monitoring report and 2024 monitoring report, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture (accessed 22 October 2026)
2. Air quality management plan for the Tbilisi agglomeration, 2024-2026, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture (accessed 22 October 2026)
3. Air quality portal and station data, National Environmental Agency (accessed 22 October 2026)
4. Particulate matter in Tbilisi, 2017-2024, M. Nodia Institute of Geophysics, Tbilisi State University, November 2025
5. Do we know what we breathe?, Arnika, 6 October 2023, and sensor.community data (accessed 22 October 2026)
6. Code of Administrative Offences, consolidated 13 October 2026, Legislative Herald of Georgia
7. Law No 1477 amending the Tax Code, 1 April 2026, Legislative Herald of Georgia, and Decree restricts imports of cars over 6 years old, 1TV, 12 February 2026
8. WHO global air quality guidelines, World Health Organization, 2021, and standards of Directive (EU) 2024/2881, European Environment Agency
9. Tbilisi residential real estate, July 2026, Galt & Taggart, for construction permits by zone

Change log

• 22 October 2026 - Data page published from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture's 2024 and 2025 monitoring reports and the Tbilisi air quality plan, National Environmental Agency data, Tbilisi State University research, Arnika, sensor.community, the Code of Administrative Offences, 1TV, WHO and EEA standards and Galt & Taggart permit data.