Lake surface water temperatures (LSWTs) are sensitive to climate change, but previous studies have typically focused on temperatures from only the last few decades. Thus, while there is good appreciation of LSWT warming in recent decades, our understanding of longer-term temperature change is comparatively limited. In this study, we use a mechanistically based open-source model (air2water), driven by air temperature from a state-of-the-art global atmospheric reanalysis (ERA-20C) and calibrated with satellite-derived LSWT observations (ARC-Lake v3), to investigate the long-term change in LSWT worldwide. The predictive ability of the model is tested across 606 lakes, with 91% of the lakes showing a daily root mean square error smaller than 1.5 °C. Model performance was better at mid-latitudes and decreased towards the equator. The results illustrated highly variable mean annual LSWT trends during the twentieth century and across climatic regions. Substantial warming is evident after ~ 1980 and the most responsive lakes to climate change are located in the temperate regions.