The president is also the commander-in-chief of the Lithuanian Armed Forces, and accordingly heads the State Defense Council and has the right to appoint the Chief of Defence (subject to Seimas consent).

[3] In addition, according to a resolution by the Constitutional Court of Lithuania in 1998, the president is required by law to nominate the candidate of the parliamentary majority to the office of prime minister.

[6] Citizens of Lithuania at least 40 years of age whose at least one parent was also a citizen (natural-born-citizen clause), who have lived in Lithuania for at least three years prior, are not serving a prison sentence, are not on active duty in the Lithuanian Armed Forces, are not bound to any other country by an oath and have never been impeached, are allowed to run for president.

[9] Three more individuals - Algirdas Pilvelis, chairman of the Lithuanian Reform Party, Jurij Subotin and Liucija Baškauskaitė - attempted to register for the election.

Adamkus was a civil engineer and Lithuanian diaspora political activist who lived in the United States as a displaced person from 1949 to 1997.

[11] As a close friend of fellow émigré Stasys Lozoraitis Jr., Adamkus was invited to be the chief of staff of his electoral campaign during the 1993 presidential election.

Paulauskas's popularity rose during his time as Prosecutor General, during which he upheld the court ruling for a death sentence for crime boss Boris Dekanidze and was involved in other high profile cases.

Landsbergis was the incumbent Speaker of the Seimas and chairman of the Homeland Union, which won the 1996 Lithuanian parliamentary election and formed the government.

Paulauskas considered him to be his likely opponent in the second round,[14] but his personal unpopularity meant that he trailed behind both of the leading candidates by a significant margin.

23.6% of the respondents supported incumbent president Algirdas Brazauskas, who announced that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Paulauskas.

Doubts arose whether he was eligible to run for the presidency due to having spent over half a century abroad, raising the possibility that he might not meet minimum residency requirements.

After the election, in April 1998, Artūras Paulauskas and his campaign team formed a political party, the New Union (Social Liberals).