[10] The province will host the future capital city of Indonesia that will be built on the borders of Kutai Kartanegara and Penajam North Paser Regencies.

The future capital is to be named Nusantara,[11] with construction originally projected to start in 2020, and intended to conclude in 2024.

However, at a hearing before Committee V of Indonesia's House of Representatives on 9 June 2020, a government representative asserted that the government had not allocated the 2022 budget for the project (for 2022, the ministry proposed a budget worth over 100.46 trillion rupiah - over 7 billion US$ - a steep reduction from the figure of 149.81 trillion rupiah in 2021).

In prehistoric times, there was limestone cave called Lubang Jeriji Saléh located in the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat Karst in the district of Bengalon, East Kutai, believed to contain one of the oldest figurative art in the world.

[14] In 2018, a team of scientists investigating the cave, led by Maxime Aubert from Griffith University and Pindi Setiawan from the Bandung Institute of Technology, published a report in the journal Nature identifying the paintings as the world's oldest known figurative art.

East Kalimantan region include Pasir, Kutai, Berau and also Karasikan (Buranun / pre-Sultanate of Sulu) claimed as conquered territory Suryanata Maharaja, the governor of Majapahit in the State Dipa (which is located in the Great Temple in Amuntai) until 1620 in the Sultanate of Banjar.

At this point in time, Sulu had rebelled against Majapahit rule and had invaded Northeast and East Borneo until the very territory of Kalimantan.

It is embodied in the Bungaya agreement, that the Sultanate of Makassar are not allowed to trade up to the east and the north Borneo.

On May 4, 1826, Sultan Adam al-wathiq Billah of Banjar reaffirmed the handover of these territories to the Dutch East Indies colonial administration.

The province is divided into seven regencies (kabupaten) and three cities (kota), together subdivided into 103 districts (kecamatan) and then into 1,026 villages (rural desa and urban kelurahan).

It touches the Celebes Sea and the Makassar Strait in the east, with its large Mangkalihat Peninsula separating the two.

Rainfall in East Kalimantan region varies by month and location of monitoring stations.

Less than half the original forest remains in places such as the Kayan Mentarang and the Kutai national parks.

The first stage will connect an area near Balikpapan port to West Kutai Regency in a 183-kilometer line and is estimated to cost about $1.8 billion.

[30][31][32] The Handil, Badak and Bekapai fields are anticline structural traps with oil reservoir sandstones between 450 and 2900 m.[30]: 399  The delta is in the Kutai basin, bounded by the Mankalihat and Paternoster carbonate arch, containing Eocene shales overlain by Oligocene fluvial deposits during marine regression, culminating in the formation of the delta in the late Miocene.

In the sixth to ten consecutively are Toraja (1.16%), Paser (1.89%), Sunda (1.59%), Madura (1.24%) and Auto Buton (1.25%), and the rest are other groups from various regions in Indonesia.

People in East Kalimantan generally use Indonesian in official purposes and Banjarese for inter-ethnic communication.

Due to the large number of Banjarese people in the province, their language became the main lingua franca especially in cities like Samarinda and Balikpapan.

According to the 2021 estimates, 3,320,000 people are Muslims, 286,150 are Protestants, 168,140 are Roman Catholics, 15,630 are Buddhists, 8,500 are Hindus and 308 are Confucians or adhere to folk religions.