To satisfy increasing global agricultural demand, the expansion of irrigation is an important intensification measure. At the same time, unsustainable water abstractions and cropland expansion pose a threat to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Irrigation potentials are influenced by local biophysical irrigation water availability and competition of different water users. Because water abstractions for various human uses along the river divert the river flow, it is also important to consider competing water uses when estimating irrigation potentials. Using a novel river routing routine that considers economic criteria of water allocation via a productivity ranking of grid cells and both land and water sustainability criteria, we estimate global irrigation potentials at a halfdegree spatial resolution. We show that there are considerable potentials to expand irrigation without harming the environment, but not necessarily at the places where irrigation is taking place today. In terms of potentially irrigated areas on current cropland, 711 Mha could be sustainably irrigated when only considering biophysical criteria. Of these, only 254 Mha have a yield value gain of more than 500 USD/ha and would be economically viable to be irrigated. The open-source data processing routine is a valuable aggregation and disaggregation tool for the use of hydrological inputs within land-system models that do not have a highly resolved representation of land use. The potentials can be aggregated to different simulation level units (e.g. basin level or country level) while maintaining biophysical and economic consistency.