A system described herein may provide a technique for location-based handling of discovery requests in a service-based network in which different instances of network functions (“NFs”) may be deployed in geographically diverse locations. For example, a Network Repository Function (“NRF”) may maintain location information for the various NF instances and may respond to discovery requests by identifying particular NF instances based on locations associated with the discovery requests. For example, such discovery requests may include a “preferred-locality” parameter or some other indication of location associated with the discovery request, based on which the NRF may identify one or more NF instances to provide in response to the discovery request.