There has been considerable research on smart cities and on adapting technology for businesses, governments, citizens and other stakeholders. However, scant attention has been paid to determine how disruptive technologies influence smart cities. Through a systemic literature review, this paper provides a point-by-point consideration of ‘nested’ disruptive technologies, namely, the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles (AV), artificial general intelligence (AGI) and 5G networks (5G), and the factors affecting their deployment in the context of smart cities. This paper also discusses why these are important disruptive technologies for smart cities and how these technologies influence them. The main challenges of implementing these disruptive technologies have been identified in the literature and are discussed in this paper. This paper also offers suggestions on the implementation of these disruptive technologies for practitioners of smart cities, so that they can consider them while digitalizing smart cities. In addition to discussing research implications, the paper also throws light on theoretical contributions and recommends ways to leverage these disruptive technologies for smart cities.