Drought driven by natural water stress in urban area affects not only arid and semi-arid regions but also semi-humid and humid areas, threatening population well-being, economic stability, and regional sustainability. In this study, we developed a comprehensive drought index (including SPEI, SRI, SSI, and VCI) based on multi-source satellite datasets (MERRA-2, FLDAS, and GIMMS-3G+). Using this index, we analysed the decadal characteristics of urban drought in 2755 cities worldwide from 1991 to 2020. Furthermore, the Geographically Weighted Regression model and sensitivity index were employed to analyse the associations between climatic and urban development factors and drought changes. Our findings revealed significant regional disparities: Mean frequency across all continents generally ranged from 0.6 to 0.8, indicating that urban droughts occur relatively frequently. Oceania experienced the longest average drought duration, reaching 27.1 months/10a, while North America had the shortest, at 10.2 months/10a. In the long term, many cities worldwide may face worsening drought risk, with 42 % of cities in Oceania showing a rising trend in drought intensity. Associations were observed between climatic and urban development factors and drought intensity, and corresponding association-based strategies for drought mitigation are proposed. However, the comprehensive drought index still has certain limitations in capturing drought conditions related to vegetation. Future studies should adopt more differentiated weighting schemes to develop more accurate drought models.