Thirty countries submitted entries to the contest, with a non-public, audio-only qualifying round held two months before the final to reduce the number of participants from 30 to 23.

This was the final contest where the results were determined solely by jury voting, with a trial use of televoting in the following year's event leading to widespread adoption from 1998 onwards.

[7] Initially broadcasters from thirty-three countries expressed an interest in participating, however planned entries from Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine failed to materialise; these nations would eventually make their contest debuts in the 2000s.

[9] Additionally, Georgina Abela, who had represented Malta at the 1991 contest with Paul Giordimaina, returned as a backing singer for the Maltese entrant Miriam Christine.

[9][14] On behalf of the contest organisers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the event was overseen by Christine Marchal-Ortiz as scrutineer.

[7][18][19] The contest underwent a re-brand for this edition, as NRK set out to improve the image of the competition and broaden its audience appeal.

[4] The competing delegations were invited to a welcome reception during the week in the build-up to the event, hosted by the Mayor of Oslo at Oslo City Hall on the evening of 13 May, as well as to events during the rehearsal week including a sailing trip on the Oslofjord and a trip to the Norsk Folkemuseum in Bygdøy where a special Eurovision-themed exhibition had been installed.

[22] Computer-generated imagery (CGI) was featured as overlays during the broadcast of the competing entries, and the voting segment was conducted via chroma key technology built by Silicon Graphics; during this segment host Ingvild Bryn was situated in the "blue room", a special area to the side of the stage with a blue-coloured background, which allowed the contest scoreboard to be rendered virtually using CGI.

[27][28] In 1996, a trial qualification process replaced the relegation system used from 1993 to 1995, whereby the lowest-ranked countries in each final were eliminated from the following year's contest.

[31] The points awarded by each country were determined by an assembled jury of sixteen individuals, which was required to be split evenly between members of the public and music professionals, between men and women, and by age.

The votes of each member were collected following the country's performance and then tallied by the non-voting jury chairperson to determine the points to be awarded.

In any cases where two or more songs in the top ten received the same number of votes, a show of hands by all jury members was used to determine the final placing.

[32][33] This was the last occasion that juries alone decided the result of the contest, as five nations introduced public televoting as a trial in 1997, and almost all other countries followed suit the next year.

[34][35] The seniority of these figures varied between the different countries; among the contributors were then-President of Turkey Süleyman Demirel, who survived an assassination attempt on the day of the contest, and then-Prime Minister of Portugal António Guterres, who would later become the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 2017.

[29][30] The table below outlines the participating countries, the order in which the juries listened to the entries, the competing artists and songs, and the results of the voting.

The act featured a film montage created by Nils Gaup which combined stev, jazz, and Norwegian folk music as part of a musical tour of Norway, followed by a dance number performed live in the Oslo Spektrum by the Oslo Danse Ensemble, composed by Egil Monn-Iversen and choreographed by Runar Borge.

The film section featured performances by Torbjørg Aamlid Paus, Bukkene Bruse, Bendik Hofseth, Håvard Gimse, Helge Kjekshus, the Brazz Brothers, Mari Boine and Terje Rypdal.

[27] Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers.