[8] Soon after, former Prime Minister and Centre Party's presidential candidate in 2006 election, Matti Vanhanen, announced that he would run for candidacy.

[13] Aho did not comment his interest in candidacy, but it was considered unlikely for him to seek presidential nomination, as he was a candidate for the supervisory board of Sberbank at the time.

[16][17] Vanhanen said that his candidacy was motivated by the support he felt he had around the country during his last campaign and the will to improve the security situation in the areas surrounding Finland.

[26] A few days after the leadership election, twenty Finns Party MPs, including all cabinet ministers, defected to form a new parliamentary group under the name New Alternative.

However, the newly elected vice-chairman Laura Huhtasaari and MP Tom Packalén announced that they were thinking about the candidacy.

On 19 June 2017 Sampo Terho announced that a new party would be formed based on the New Alternative parliamentary group under the name Blue Reform.

[12][41] In June 2016, Heinäluoma announced that he would not seek presidency due to his wife's recent death and ongoing work in the Parliament.

[43] The leader of the party Antti Rinne, the Governor of the Bank of Finland Erkki Liikanen and MEP Liisa Jaakonsaari likewise announced that they were not entering the presidential race.

[47] Prominent SDP figureheads, such as Erkki Tuomioja and Lasse Lehtinen, even suggested the possibility of backing the incumbent president Sauli Niinistö.

[49] In Spring 2016, then leader of the party, Carl Haglund stated that he was thinking about candidacy, but renounced his leadership and left politics later that year.

[57][58] Väyrynen didn't leave the notion ahead of the election, but revealed afterwards that his team had collected 162,000 euros for the campaign.

[63] In October 2017, the Security Committee of the Finnish Ministry of Defence released an assessment on the possibilities of Russian involvement in the presidential election.

The assessment addressed nine possible scenarios, ranging from spreading false information through social media to a political assassination.

The Security Committee also suggested ten possible objectives for Russian involvement, including obstructing discussion on NATO and isolating Finland from the European Union.

[76] Long-time Minister for Foreign Affairs Erkki Tuomioja heavily criticised the assessment and called it "pure fantasy resembling something from the pen of Ilkka Remes".