It is widely acknowledged that the global water crisis is a governance crisis. To be effective, governance interventions must be designed to align with the specific context in which they are implemented. Our research aims to identify the types of water governance pathways that lead to successful sustainability performance, with a particular focus on the role of problem contexts. We use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine 41 water governance cases that address groundwater exploitation in agriculture and surface water pollution. The analysis reveals a clear link between the nature of the water problem and successful governance pathways, emphasizing the need for governance measures to align with the specific characteristics of the problems they aim to address. The results also underscore the importance of governance capacity, as evidenced in all three pathways that emerge as solutions in our QCA. Finally, the study shows that no single governance characteristics guarantees success; rather, it is the interplay of multiple, reinforcing governance characteristics that contributes to successful sustainability performance.