[1] Incumbent Governor of Salzburg, Wilfried Haslauer of the Austrian People's Party, ran for re-election.

After the election, the ÖVP entered into a coalition with the Greens and NEOS, the first of its kind in Austria, and sometimes called "Dirndl"-coalition.

The 36 seats of the Landtag of Salzburg are elected via open list proportional representation in a two-step process.

The seats are distributed between six multi-member constituencies, representing the six administrative districts of the state: Stadt Salzburg (City of Salzburg), Salzburg-Umgebung (Flachgau), Hallein (Tennengau), Sankt Johann (Pongau), Tamsweg (Lungau) and Zell am See (Pinzgau).

For parties to receive any representation in the Landtag, they must either win at least one seat in a constituency directly, or clear a 5 percent state-wide electoral threshold.

[3] Parties that retracted their candidacy Both the Greens and NEOS officially started their election campaigns on 24 February 2023.

The KPÖ saw a surge in its vote share from 0.4% in the prior election to over 11% (its best ever result in the state), picking up four seats and achieving representation in the state parliament for the first time since the 1945 elections, while NEOS lost all its seats after failing to reach the 5% electoral threshold.

KPÖ Plus already said during their election campaign that they will become an opposition party, doing checks-and-balances work primarily directed at Governor Haslauer and his ÖVP and pushing housing-related topics.

Finally, the ÖVP would also hold procedural talks with the KPÖ Plus, even though both parties already ruled out a coalition together beforehand out of ideological reasons.

[22] On 28 April 2023, after the conclusion of the first exploration talks with all parties, Governor Haslauer and the ÖVP proposed the creation of a broad ÖVP-FPÖ-SPÖ coalition to represent as many voters as possible.

The announcement of in-depth coalition talks between ÖVP and FPÖ led to sharp criticism from the other parties.