The city has Europe's only salt lake as part of its central park; more than 100,000 people visit its shores every year. One of the most influential writers in the Balkans, Meša Selimović hails from Tuzla. In addition, Tuzla hosts the annual Meša Selimović book festival (in July), where an award for the best novel written in the languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro is presented. The first professional theatre in Tuzla, Narodno Pozorište u Tuzli, was founded by the brothers Mihajlo and Živko Crnogorčević in 1944.

Tuzla is the seat of the Tuzla Canton, which is a canton of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as of Tuzla Municipality, which is one of the 13 municipalities that together constitute the Tuzla Canton. Administratively, Tuzla is divided into 39 mjesne zajednice (local districts).

Apart from Tuzla, the municipality incorporates several other adjacent settlements, including the town of Gornja Tuzla (Upper Tuzla), as well as the villages of Husino, Par Selo, Simin Han, Obodnica, Kamenjaši, Plane, Šići, and others.

The Mayor of Tuzla Municipality is Jasmin Imamović, a writer and lawyer born in 1957, of the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was reelected to a second term in 2004.

The City council of Tuzla has 30 members, of the following parties:

The Chairwoman of the City Council, Nada Mladina, is a member of the SDP. Tuzla is twinned with Bologna in Italy, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat in Spain, Pécs in Hungary and Osijek in Croatia, as well as with Ravenna province in Italy.

Extractions of the city's salt deposits, particularly in the 20th century, have caused sections of the city center to sink. Structures in the "sinking area" either collapsed or were demolished, and there are few structures in the city that predate the 20th century, despite the fact that the city was founded over 1000 years ago.

Tuzla has an international airport located at Dubrave (IATA code: TZL), and an effective and well developed public bus network. There are plans to introduce a trolleybus network in the city soon.

The airport was opened to civilian aircraft only recently. The airport had comprised a portion of "Eagle Base", an American military base that has been home to NATO troops serving in SFOR, Bosnia's stabilization force.

Several sports teams from Tuzla have participated in international competitions. Almost all of Tuzla's sports teams are named Sloboda, meaning freedom. The most popular sports in Tuzla include football (FK Sloboda); basketball (KK Sloboda-Dita), karate (KBS Tuzla-Sinalco) and many others. The women's basketball team KK Jedinstvo-Aida were European club champions in the late eighties, with the most famous sportswoman from Tuzla in their midst - Razija (Raza) Mujanović. First and oldset sport in Tuzla is gymnastics.

Tuzla is home to the University of Tuzla, with more than 10,000 students.

Also existing in Tuzla is the Cardiovascular Clinic, a part of the Clinical Center and the top institution for cardiology and cardiac surgery in the country.