Reference architectures are generalized models of several end systems that share one or more common domains. They facilitate the design of high-quality concrete architectures and the communication between domain professionals. The reference architecture approach should be applied in the smart city domain because of its complexity where different stakeholders and heterogeneous systems and technologies must coexist and interact. Smart cities reference architectures should offer a cooperative framework for stakeholders and a guide to design concrete architectures. Industry and academia have proposed different requirements for concrete architectures. However, there is a lack of standardization in the requirements for the design of smart city reference architectures. This can produce that concrete architectures do not meet citizens’ requirements. The goal of this paper is to define a set of requirements for the design of smart city reference architectures. We conduct a literature review to find the requirements which should fulfil these reference architectures.