The district's administrative territory encompasses all of the Nicobar Islands, which are located in the Indian Ocean, between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea.

The headquarters of the district is the village of Malacca, located on the island of Car Nicobar.

[3] Nicobar district occupies an area of 1,648 square kilometres (636 sq mi),[4] comparatively equivalent to Mauritius.

The district was severely affected by the tsunami that was caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which led to many deaths and damaged infrastructure.

As of the 2011 census, Nicobarese is spoken as the first language by 65.98 percent of the district's population followed by Hindi (9.83%), Tamil (6.10%), Telugu (4.05%), Bengali (3.90%), Kurukh (3.31%), Malayalam (1.79%) and others.