Anticipated changes in climate by the end of this century are likely to modify suspended sediment yields (Sy) in diverse ways. Past work has shown how hydrological non-stationarity may alter water discharges and Sy, but less attention has been given to the impact of likely future changes in upland sediment detachment on downstream Sy. In certain environments, potential changes in vegetation cover on upland hillslopes associated with a change in rainfall and runoff may more than counteract the effects of runoff on Sy. Changes in precipitation, temperature, and vegetation may, therefore, interact in nonlinear ways to produce unexpected changes. In this work, we simulated future changes to background Sy (i.e., changes unrelated to land-use changes and dams) with climatological and vegetative data output from an ensemble of CMIP6 Earth System Model (ESM) simulations. Depending on the future scenario, the cumulative annual sediment flux of 780 globally distributed rivers increases by between 2.3% and 8.4%. Projected high-latitude changes in each forcing variable result in significant latitudinally averaged deviations from historical Sy, while lower latitudes show diverse regional responses. In regions where ensemble members agree on future changes in forcing variables, large Sy changes are forecast with high confidence (e.g., >200% Sy increase for several northeastern U.S. rivers at the 95% level). In contrast, ensemble variability in vegetation projections results in considerable uncertainty in the projected Sy of rivers in other regions. Further improvements to the vegetation components of ESMs will help to reduce regional uncertainties in projected changes to Sy.