Climate change will very likely impact future hydrological drought characteristics across the world. Here, we quantify the impact of human water use including reservoir regulation and climate change on future low flows and associated hydrological drought characteristics on a global scale. The global hydrological and water resources model PCR-GLOBWB is used to simulate daily discharge globally at resolution for 1971–2099. The model was forced with the latest CMIP5 climate projections taken from five General Circulation Models (GCMs) and four emission scenarios (RCPs), under the framework of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project.