The municipality is a winegrowing centre and lies in the Palatinate in the northwest of the Rhine-Neckar urban agglomeration.

Kleinkarlbach lies at the entrance to the Leiningen Valley (Leininger Tal) on the river Eckbach, which is part of the Rhine’s catchment area.

After the French Revolution it belonged to the Department of Mont-Tonnerre (or Donnersberg in German) and from 1813 to 1816 lay Kleinkarlbach under Austrian administration, before it was annexed to the Kingdom of Bavaria as part of the Rheinkreis.

The municipal election held on 7 June 2009 yielded the following results:[4] The German blazon reads: In Gold ein grüner Wellenbalken.

The arms were approved in 1982 by the Regierungsbezirk government in Neustadt and date from a 1452 court seal in which the wavy stripe were slanted rather than fess (horizontal).