Creative talent is the foundation for the competitive advantage of cities, and the integration of creativity and tourism concepts is essential for the growth of such talents. In this regard, the aim of the present study is to identify the forces influencing the development of creative tourism in line with the sustainable urban development of Zabol. This research is applied in terms of purpose, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in terms of nature, survey-based in terms of method, and descriptive-analytical in terms of implementation. The statistical population of the study includes academic experts and specialists (university professors in the field of urban geography, executive officials, and related urban organizations), who were selected using a purposive sampling method, with 20 individuals chosen based on theoretical saturation. For data analysis, methods such as Grounded Theory, F-BWM, and F-AHP were used. The results of the Grounded Theory method were used to identify the effective forces in the development of creative tourism in Zabol city (five categories: physical, economic, socio-cultural, institutional, and structural, along with 16 semantic units), which were extracted using the opinions of experts and specialists. This indicates a comprehensive approach to the issues of creative tourism in Zabol city, considering the mentioned categories and semantic units. Among the proposed categories, the institutional category with a weight of 0.287 ranked the highest, while the structural category with a weight of 0.228, the economic category with a weight of 0.175, the socio-cultural category with a weight of 0.156, and the physical category with a weight of 0.154 ranked second to fifth, respectively.