Khartoum State groups its three Nile-confluence cities, Khartoum, Omdurman, and Khartoum North (Bahri), into a single administrative unit along with outlying localities like Jabal Awliya, Om Badda, and Karari. The state is divided into seven districts: Khartoum, Um Badda, Omdurman, Karary, Khartoum Bahri, Sharg En Nile (East Nile), and South Khartoum. Each district has its own character. Khartoum proper is the colonial capital, with ministries and the presidential palace along Nile Street. Omdurman is older, more traditional, the Mahdist capital that held onto its sense of being the real city. Bahri is industrial. Jabal Awliya sits at the southern end, where the White Nile is dammed to regulate flow toward Egypt. This division is old. Much of it predates the state's formal 1991 administrative structure.

The state's demographic map is a tribal one. The Omdurman and rural south areas are inhabited by the Gamowia, alongside the Kababish and Kawahla people who were displaced from Kordofan by the droughts and desertification of the early and mid-1980s. In northern Karari locality the Shiheinat dominate. In Khartoum North the Abdallab and Batahin. In the East Nile the Abu Dileig, Batahin, and Kawahla mix, with the Iseilat in Um-Dowan. In 2008, 79 percent of the state's population was urban, and 74 percent reported their region of origin as outside Khartoum. The capital region is, in other words, a migrants' city of long standing, built by people whose grandparents came from Darfur, Kordofan, the Gezira, or the east.

Before the war, Khartoum State held more than 7,500 factories across more than ten industrial areas. Food processing, electronics, household appliances, pharmaceuticals, textiles, footwear, tanneries, and chemicals all operated in the state. Five Chinese car manufacturers were scheduled to begin operations to make Khartoum a vehicle manufacturing hub for Africa. The ambition was real. The capacity to deliver it had been weakened by decades of sanctions, US hostility following 1998, and the chronic underinvestment that followed South Sudan's independence in 2011 and the loss of most of Sudan's oil revenue. The 15 April 2023 war ended the ambition. Most of the factories in the capital are damaged, stopped, or destroyed. The state's agriculture in the rural fringes, the fruit farms and dairy operations that once supplied the capital, are scattered.

Khartoum State contains the National Museum of Sudan, the country's largest, with pre-historic and Meroitic collections from the Nile Valley's ancient kingdoms. The Khalifa House Museum preserves the residence of Abdullah al-Ta'ayshi, the Mahdist caliph who succeeded Muhammad Ahmad. There are specialized museums of natural history, folklore, and popular heritage. A center for the study of folklore operates under the National Authority for the Arts. The Omdurman Museum of Ibrahim Hijazi holds another collection. These institutions, along with the libraries at the University of Khartoum, held a significant portion of Sudan's documentary memory before the war. Reports in 2023 and 2024 indicated looting and damage at the National Museum; the extent of losses is still being catalogued. Documentary material that survived the Mahdist war of 1885, the British reconquest of 1898, and the 2019 revolution may or may not survive this one.

The list of Khartoum State governors reads as a political history of Sudan in miniature. Under Egyptian rule from the 1830s, Ottoman officials rotated through the governorship. After the Mahdist interlude and the 1898 reconquest, the British administrators took over. After 1956 independence, Sudanese governors came and went. Under Omar al-Bashir's long rule (1989-2019), loyal appointees like Abdul-Rahman Al-Khidir and Abdul-Rahim Mohamed Hussein held the position for years at a stretch. After the 2019 revolution, governors turned over quickly: Hashim Osman al-Hussein, Murtadha Abdalla Warraq, Ahmed Abdoun Hammad, Youssef Adam Aldai as acting governor in 2020. Ayman Khaled Nimer from July 2020 to 2022. Ahmed Osman Hamza from 1 March 2022. Each turnover marked a shift in national politics. The state that contains Sudan's capital has always been its most sensitive office.