The city is located on the western tip of the island of New Guinea with its only land borders being with Sorong Regency.

[1] The suburban area of Sorong city contains tropical rainforest and mangrove forest that has increasingly become popular as ecotourism attractions especially for birdwatching or wildlife watching.

After centuries of contact with Chinese merchants, European missionaries, and people from Maluku and Sangihe-Talaud, the name underwent further change into Sorong.

[6] The newly established oil fields led to the expansion of Dutch colonial influence in Western New Guinea, and had made Sorong into a valuable military target.

During World War II, Sorong was occupied by the Empire of Japan in 1942, and would serve as the center of operations for Japanese forces during the Western New Guinea campaign.

[7] After the Indonesian War of Independence, the colonial administration would attempt to expand oil production with the construction of the 58 kilometer Klamono-Sorong pipeline.

[13] Sorong experiences a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen Af), as there is no real dry season throughout the year.

A container port was built in Sorong with an annual container-handling capacity of 500,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) at a cost of Rp.800 billion (US$93.6 million).

In 2016, the ARIA Music Awards-nominated Papua New Guinean-Australian musician Airileke released a single titled "Sorong Samarai".