In 1950, only 30% of the global population resided in urban areas, and by 2050, this is projected to shift to 70%, representing a significant demographic reversal. There is a noticeable trend of migration from rural and underdeveloped areas to major metropolises in pursuit of education, employment, and better living standards in both developed and developing countries. This rapid urbanization poses severe challenges, such as overcrowding, housing shortages, traffic congestion, limited energy supply, pollution, crime, etc. Therefore, smart cities have emerged as a pivotal response to harmonizing urbanization with global sustainable development goals. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) offer leveraging resources from both public and private sectors to foster smart city developments by overcoming associated financial and technological challenges. Diverse PPP models have been deployed in smart city developments at various success levels; nevertheless, significant challenges remain in the governance, delivery, and management since the PPP implementation is highly contingent on specific national and regional agendas, institutional capacities, and socio-political contexts. This context-dependency often complicates the transferability of PPP models across different regions and contributes to the persistence of governance issues in smart city PPPs. Therefore, examining and contrasting the drivers and barriers of PPP implementation in smart city projects across developed and developing contexts is crucial. To achieve this, a comprehensive narrative literature review on smart city PPPs was conducted, followed by manual content analysis to facilitate qualitative synthesis of literature findings. This approach enabled the identification of both common and unique drivers and barriers in both developed and developing contexts, which influence effective smart city PPP implementation. The insights gained from this study can empower governments, policymakers, and smart city practitioners in addressing these critical drivers and barriers, thereby following up on the development of tailored PPPs and PPP governance models, which ultimately enhance the success of smart city PPPs.