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Macron was born in Amiens and studied philosophy at Paris Nanterre University before pursuing a master's degree in public affairs at Sciences Po and graduating from the École nationale d'administration in 2004. Before joining Rothschild & Co. as an investment banker, he worked as a senior civil servant at the Inspectorate General of Finances. Macron was nominated deputy secretary general by President François Hollande immediately after his election in May 2012, making him one of Hollande's closest advisers. Premier Manuel Valls appointed him to the French cabinet as Minister of the Economy, Industry, and Digital Affairs in August 2014. While in office, Macron championed a variety of pro-business reforms. He resigned from the cabinet in August 2016 and began campaigning for the French presidential election in 2017. Macron ran for president under the banner of La République En Marche!, a centrist and pro-European political movement he founded in April 2016, despite his membership in the Socialist Party from 2006 to 2009. Macron came out on top in the first round of voting, thanks in part to the Fillon incident, and was elected President of France on May 7, 2017, defeating Marine Le Pen with 66.1 percent of the vote in the second round. At the age of 39, Macron became the youngest president in French history. Macron's party, renamed La République En Marche, won a majority in the National Assembly in the 2017 French parliamentary election a month later, when he picked Édouard Philippe as Prime Minister. Throughout Macron's presidency, he has presided over a series of labor and tax reforms. Opposition to his policies, particularly a proposed gasoline tax, culminated in the 2018 yellow vest protests and other marches.

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Le Pen earned a Master of Laws in 1991 and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) in criminal law in 1992 from Panthéon-Assas University. Marine Le Pen joined the FN when she was 18 years old, in 1986. She was elected to her first political position as a Regional Councillor for Nord-Pas-de-Calais in 1988. In the same year, she became the head of the FN's legal department, which she oversaw until 2003. In 2000, she was elected president of Generations Le Pen, an informal group affiliated with the Front National that tried to "de-demonize" the party. In 2000, she was elected to the FN Executive Committee, and in 2003, she was elected vice-president of the FN. She ran her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen's, presidential campaign in 2006. In 2007, she was appointed as one of the FN's two executive vice-presidents, in charge of training, communication, and publicity. Le Pen announced her desire to compete for FN leader in early 2010, saying she aimed to establish the party "a huge popular party that addresses itself not only to the electorate on the right, but to all the French people." She began her candidacy for the presidency in Cuers, Var. She stated during a meeting in Paris on November 14, 2010, that her goal was to "not just to put together our political family. It entails transforming the Front National into a focal point for the entire French people ", adding that she believes the FN leader should be the party's presidential candidate in 2012. She campaigned for the FN leadership for four months, having meetings with FN members in 51 departments. One of her official supporters paid a visit to each of the other departments. [36] She said during her final campaign gathering in Hénin-Beaumont on December 19, 2010, that the FN would deliver the genuine debate of the upcoming presidential race. Her candidacy was approved by a majority of senior party figures, including her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

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Pécresse Roux is the daughter of Dominique Roux, a well-known economist who taught at the Université Paris Dauphine and eventually became the CEO of Bolloré. She graduated from HEC Paris and ÉNA with a law degree.  She is multilingual, speaking French, English, Russian, and Japanese. Pécresse worked as an auditor for the Conseil d'État until 1998, when she became President Jacques Chirac's counselor. In addition to her local politics, Pécresse was a member of the French National Assembly from 2002 to 2007, representing the Yvelines. She served on the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and the Committee on Cultural Affairs in parliament. She became the spokeswoman for Nicolas Sarkozy, the UMP's leader at the time, in 2004. Pécresse served in Prime Minister François Fillon's cabinet as Minister of Higher Education and Research from 2007 until 2011. During her time in office, she implemented a number of reforms aimed at giving universities more control over their resources and allowing for more private sector funding. A wave of strikes erupted as a result of the reforms. Pécresse led a list of candidates for the Union of the Right, a combination of centrist and right-wing parties, which barely defeated the Union of the Left, a coalition of socialists and ecologists, in the Île-de-France regional election in December 2015. She was the first woman to be elected president of the Île-de-France Regional Council. In July 2017, Pécresse launched her own political movement, Libres!, ahead of the Republicans' 2017 leadership elections. She also spoke out against Laurent Wauquiez, the recently elected LR chairman, warning against his likely "porosity" to the far-right National Front's beliefs.  She later announced her departure from LR on June 5, 2019, three days after Wauquiez resigned as the party's president.

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Fabien Roussel is the son of Daniel Roussel, a former journalist at L'Humanité, and comes from a family of activists.  He graduated from the Journalists Development Centre after finishing secondary school in Champigny-sur-Marne, in the Paris region. He began his career as an image reporter for television channel France 3's Ardennes regional branch. A Spanish exile who died after being incarcerated in the Vernet camp was one of his paternal great-grandfathers. Fabien Roussel joined the Mouvement Jeunes Communistes de France (MJCF) during his high school years to protest apartheid in South Africa and urge Nelson Mandela's release. He also took part in large protests against the Monory law and the Devaquet bill, which dealt with employee shareholding and university organization, respectively. He worked as a communication advisor for Communist Michelle Demessine, then Secretary of State for Tourism under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, starting in 1997. After that, he worked for Alain Bocquet and Jean-Jacques Candelier. Roussel was elected as a member of the French Communist Party to succeed Bocquet as Member of Parliament for the 20th seat of Nord in 2017. In 2018, he was elected as the party's leader. Roussel secured the Communist presidential nomination for 2022 on May 9, 2021. Roussel lives with his partner Dorothée, a civil servant of category C.

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Nathalie Arthaud, a politician and economics teacher at a French high school, was born on February 23, 1970. She was the top contender for the European Parliament election in France in December 2018 for the Lutte Ouvrière, Workers' Struggle. Arthaud indicated that her campaign will be solely focused on labor rights, and that her party has declined to form a list with other left-wing parties because she does not want the campaign to become "a sounding board for all the disputes." Although the party received 176,339 votes, it did not win any seats. Since 2008, she has been a member of the socialist party and has stood for office on its behalf numerous times since 2001. In both the 2012 and 2017 elections, she ran for president of the party. Raising the minimum wage, halting evictions and huge layoffs, and nationalizing French financial institutions were all part of her program. She was a self-declared communist who focused her efforts on issues affecting workers and the economy. She finished ninth and tenth in the 2012 and 2017 elections, respectively, with 0.56 and 0.64 percent of the vote. In 2019, Arthaud was likewise at the top of the Workers' Struggle's list of European Parliament nominees. Arthaud is the Workers' Struggle's presidential candidate in the 2022 French election, after being nominated by the party in its 2020 convention.

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Mélenchon then attended the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen, Normandy, where he received his secondary education. He began his career as a teacher after graduating from the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon with a degree in philosophy and the CAPES. He was elected a municipal councillor of Massy and a general councillor of Essonne after joining the Socialist Party in 1976. He was elected to the Senate in 1986 and was re-elected in 1995 and 2004. Between 2000 and 2002, he was Minister of Vocational Education in Lionel Jospin's cohabitation government, under Minister of National Education Jack Lang. He was a member of the Socialist Party's extreme wing until the 2008 Reims Congress, after which he departed to create the Left Party with Marc Dolez, a member of the National Assembly. Mélenchon offered a new contribution to the political movement "Trait d'union" at the Reims Congress in September 2008, which was formed after the triumph of the "No" in the 2005 French European Constitution referendum. On the eve of the motions' submission, an agreement was achieved between the seven contributions of the PS's left wing, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon was one of the signatories of motion C, "A world of progress," led by Benoît Hamon. Mélenchon ran for the Left Front in the 11th seat of the Pas-de-Calais against Marine Le Pen, who received over 31% of the vote in the presidential election. He came in third place with 21.46 percent of the vote, barely losing out to Socialist Party member Phillip Kemel for second place. Following this outcome, Mélenchon chose not to run in the election's second round. Mélenchon became one of the most outspoken critics of François Hollande's centrist free-market policies during his administration. He called it a betrayal of the French Left's culture and principles.

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Hidalgo was born in the Spanish province of Cádiz, in the town of San Fernando. Her paternal grandpa was a Spanish Socialist who, along with his wife and four children, fled to France after the Spanish Civil War ended. Her grandparents, on the other hand, returned to Spain some years later. Hidalgo earned a master's degree in social law from Jean Moulin University Lyon 3, then went on to Paris West University Nanterre La Défense to get a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) in social and trade unionism. At the age of 24, she was assigned to her first inspector job in Chevilly-Larue, before moving to the 15th arrondissement of Paris a few months later. She then worked for the Director of Human Resources at the Ministry of Labour for a year as a project manager. Hidalgo served as a staffer in three ministerial offices in Lionel Jospin's government: first, as a technical advisor in Martine Aubry's office at the Ministry of Employment and Solidarity; then, from 1998 to 2000, with Nicole Péry, Secretary of State for Women's Rights and Vocational Training. In the 2001 municipal elections, she led the Socialist Party (PS) list in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, which received 26.5 percent of the vote in the first round before falling behind the list led by Édouard Balladur and Mayor René Galy-Dejean in the second round. She became a member of the Paris City Council and was named First Deputy Mayor of Paris. She ran for the 12th arrondissement of Paris legislative election in June 2002, garnering 29.6 percent of the vote in the first round, but Balladur was elected with 54.2 percent of the vote in the second round. On the ticket sponsored by Jean-Paul Huchon, she was elected to the Regional Council of Île-de-France in March 2004.

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Éric Zemmour was born in Montreuil on August 31, 1958, in the Seine department, which is now part of Seine-Saint-Denis. His parents were Algerian Berber Jews with French citizenship. They had emigrated to metropolitan France with their parents and siblings in 1952, during the Algerian War. His paternal grandparents, born Liaou and Messouka, adopted the names Justin and Rachel upon their arrival in France, while his maternal grandmother, born Ourida, adopted the middle name Claire. Her husband's name was Léon, which became Zemmour's middle name. École Lucien-de-Hirsh and École Yabné were two of Zemmour's Jewish private schools. In 1979, he received his diploma from the Paris Institut d'études politiques. Under the editorship of Philippe Tesson, Zemmour began his career in 1986 on the politics desk at Le Quotidien de Paris. He worked as a lead writer for Info-Matin for a year after the daily went out of business in 1994. He began his career as a political writer at Le Figaro in 1996. He was promoted to Le Figaro Magazine in 2009, purportedly after making contentious statements in the press, but in reality, because his compensation was deemed too expensive for his low weekly productivity. In 2013, he was sent to Le Figaro as a permanent journalist, where he continued to write frequently, including literary reviews, until September 2021, when he took time off to promote his new book. In addition to political articles, Zemmour has authored biographies of Édouard Balladur and Jacques Chirac. He contributed to Michel Royer and Karl Zéro's screenplay for the film Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac, albeit the latter indicated that Zemmour's material was only used sparingly.

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Lassalle, who served as mayor of Lourdios-Ichère from 1977 to 2017, was also a member of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques General Council from 1982 to 2015, having been elected in the canton of Accous. From 1991 to 2001, he served as one of the general council's vice presidents under François Bayrou. Lassalle was elected to the National Assembly in 2002, where he represents the 4th constituency of Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Lassalle has been the president of the World Mountain People Association, an international network of mountain inhabitants operating in over 70 nations, since 2002. He is also the president of a cultural association in Haut-Béarn. During questions to Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy in the National Assembly on June 3, 2003, Lassalle stood up and sang the Occitan anthem Se Canta in protest of Sarkozy's announcement concerning the housing of 23 gendarmes tasked with guarding the Somport tunnel, which connects France and Spain through the Pyrenees. From April to December 2013, Lassalle went around France for eight months to meet people. "Everywhere I went, I witnessed a crisis in the level of living, a loss of identity, and a feeling of a common destiny," he said later. Lassalle ran for President of France in 2017. The Association des maires ruraux de France backed him up. His platform was centrist, with agrarianism, protectionism, and environmental preservation as pillars.

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Between 2002 and 2008, Jadot co-ordinated Greenpeace efforts in France, as well as heading the Alliance pour la planète and being a significant role in the 2008 Grenelle Environnement Accord. Prior to the 2009 European elections, Jadot announced his retirement from Greenpeace in order to run for the West seat on the Europe Écologie ticket. He and Nicole Kiil-Nielsen were elected to the European Parliament after his list garnered 16.65% of the vote. He was re-elected as MEP in the French Ouest constituency during the 2014 European elections. Jadot was a member of parliament's Committee on International Trade from 2009 until 2019. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety. Jadot served on the Parliament's delegations to Southeast Asian countries and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly in addition to his committee appointments. He is also a member of the European Parliament's Intergroup on Animal Welfare and Conservation and the Intergroup on LGBT Rights. After defeating fellow MEP Michèle Rivasi in the second round of primary voting, Jadot was chosen by Europe Ecology – The Greens to run as their candidate in the 2017 French presidential election. Despite receiving 496 signatures right before the signature collection period began, Jadot announced his withdrawal and endorsed Socialist nominee Benoît Hamon, the two having agreed on a shared platform; their alliance was completed when EELV primary voters accepted the deal on February 26. On the 30th of January 2021, Jadot launched his candidacy for the French presidential election of 2022. He defeated Sandrine Rousseau in the party's primaries, winning 51.03 percent of the vote.

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In the 2007 legislative election, Poutou ran for the Revolutionary Communist League. He ran in Gironde's 5th constituency, where he received 1,582 votes and finished eighth, despite the party's failure to secure a seat in the National Assembly. In the 2010 regional election in his home area of Aquitaine, he led its successor party, the New Anticapitalist Party. He was not elected to the regional council since the list he led received only 2.5 percent of the vote. Poutou ran again in the 2012 parliamentary election, receiving 1,264 votes and finishing eighth for the second time. He was the leader of the New Anticapitalist Party's list in the 2014 European Parliament election in South-West France, however he was not elected an MEP. He was picked as the New Anticapitalist Party's presidential candidate for the 2012 election in June 2011. He would also have to deal with internal party differences on whether or not to work more closely with the Left Front in order to unite the political forces on the left of the centre-left Socialist Party. He was barely known by the general public for much of the campaign, and he was described as lacking Besancenot's popularity, charm, and fluency with words. Despite openly admitting that he did not want to be a candidate and that he had no intention of being elected, especially since one of his policies was to abolish the presidency in favor of a fully parliamentary system, he saw his profile and popularity rise slightly in the final stages of the campaign, when all candidates confirmed by the Constitutional Council received equal airtime in the media, as required by law. Poutou was nominated for the 2017 presidential election by the New Anticapitalist Party on March 20, 2016. Poutou also addressed the moderators, saying, "It's not because I'm not wearing a tie that you have to interrupt me." Poutou was the most visible discussion participant, according to various media observers.

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Nicolas Dupont-Aignan was born in Paris on March 7, 1961, to Jean-Louis Dupont, a vintner who escaped a German POW camp during WWII, and Colette Aignan.  When he was younger, Dupont-Aignan was a member of Rally for the Republic. He campaigned for Gaullist candidate Jacques Chaban-Delmas in the 1974 presidential election. Dupont-Aignan began his political career as a civil administrator, serving in a variety of ministerial positions, including the Minister of National Education and the Environment. In February 1995, Dupont-Aignan joined Rally for France and began working in Michel Barnier's ministry of the environment, although refusing to support Édouard Balladur or Jacques Chirac in their presidential bids that year. Dupont-Aignan was friendly with a number of Europhile figures, including Francois Bayrou, while serving with Michel Barnier. In the early 1990s, the city of Yerres was in debt to the tune of 20 million euros due to the closure of a large swimming complex only a few months after it opened. Dupont-Aignan received 51.8 percent of the vote in the 1995 municipal elections, defeating the then-Socialist mayor. In the first round of the 2008 election, he received 79.70 percent of the vote, giving him one of the greatest victory margins for a mayor in France. Shortly after gaining office, Dupont-Aignan attempted to fix the debt crisis by renegotiating interest rates with banks and reducing the debt from 45 million euros to 34 million euros. Dupont-Aignan announced his intention to run for president in 2012 in November 2010. During an interview on TF1 on March 15, 2016, Dupont-Aignan confirmed his candidacy for the 2017 presidential election.