In Wereldsteden, players travel across a world map, buying and selling souvenirs in various cities. Players win by being the first to collect six different souvenirs.
To travel across the board, players each have a similar hand of red, green and blue cards, as well as some action cards. The colors of the cards match connecting lines between cities on the board.
In each of his turns, a player either plays one or more cards from his hand, trying to travel as efficiently as possible and block other players were needed, or the player rests, taking back his discard pile.
Souvenirs can be bought in fixed locations (e.g. a Taj Mahal keychain, available in New Delhi). Souvenirs can be sold in selected cities. Once a souvenir is sold, a random tile is selected to indicate the next souvenir that is requested by that city. This introduces some randomness to the game.