Abstract Background Diabetes mellitus (DM) has a direct impact on the clinical manifestation and prognosis of active tuberculosis disease (TB) and is known to increase the chance of developing the condition. We sought to determine the prevalence of DM in adult Ugandan patients with recently diagnosed TB and the associated sociodemographic, anthropometric, and metabolic characteristics of TB-DM comorbidity. Methods In this cross-sectional study conducted at the adult TB treatment centres of three tertiary healthcare facilities in Uganda, we screened adult participants with recently diagnosed TB (diagnosed in