Gabrielius Landsbergis

Gabrielius Landsbergis was born on 7 January 1982 in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Landsbergis is the grandson of Vytautas Landsbergis, who led Lithuania’s independence movement.

He speaks English, German, and French in addition to Lithuanian.

Besides Lithuanian, Landsbergis speaks English, German, French, and Russian.

His hobbies include reading and running.

Gabrielius Landsbergis’s father is Vytautas V. Landsbergis, a well-known Lithuanian writer and director, and his mother is Giedrė (Bukelytė) Landsbergienė, a psychologist.

He is married and has four children.

Gabrielius Landsbergis is Lithuanian by nationality.

He obtained a Master of Arts in International Relations and Political Science from Vilnius University in 2005.

He earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from Vilnius University in 2003.

From 2011 to 2014, Landsbergis worked at the Government Chancellery of Lithuania as Head of the Regions Unit.

From 2007 to 2011, he served as Third Secretary at the Embassy of Lithuania to Belgium and Luxembourg.

After the 2024 parliamentary elections, Landsbergis resigned as Homeland Union party leader and stepped down as Foreign Minister in October 2024.

He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024, serving in the country’s 18th Government.

From March to November 2020, he was the Leader of the Opposition in the Seimas.

Landsbergis served as a Member of the Seimas (Lithuanian Parliament) from 2016 until 2024.

He served as Chair of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrat political group (faction) in the Seimas from 2016 until 2020.

Gabrielius Landsbergis was the Chairman of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) from 2015 to 2024.

In 2015, Landsbergis was elected Chairman of the Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats, securing 55.89% of the vote in a runoff against Irena Degutienė (who received 44.07%).

He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2016.

As a Member of the European Parliament (2014–2016), he sat on the Committee on International Trade and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, and served as Vice-Chair of the EP delegation for relations with Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan) and Mongolia.

He also served on the Seimas Committee on Audit from December 2022 to March 2024.

During the 2020–2024 term, Landsbergis was a member of the Seimas Committee on Legal Affairs (2020–2022, 2024).

He served as a member of the Seimas Committee on National Security and Defence from July 2019 until November 2020.

He was a member of the Seimas Committee on Economics from November 2016 to July 2019.

In the 2024 parliamentary election, Landsbergis lost the Centro–Žaliakalnio single-member constituency runoff to Simonas Kairys of the Liberal Movement (Kairys won with 55.08% of the vote vs Landsbergis’s 38.25%), but Landsbergis still entered the Seimas via the TS-LKD party list.

In the 2020 parliamentary election, he was re-elected in the Centro–Žaliakalnio constituency, winning the second round with 59.8% of the vote against Audronė Jankuvienė (who received 37.48%).

He was re-elected to the Seimas in 2020, again representing the Centro–Žaliakalnio constituency (No. 20).

In the 2016 parliamentary election, Landsbergis won the Centro–Žaliakalnio single-member constituency in the runoff with 53.89% of the vote (defeating Audronė Jankuvienė who got 44.18%).

In the multi-member voting of the 2016 Seimas elections, Landsbergis led the TS-LKD list and garnered 132,227 preferential (reitingo) votes, whereas in 2020 he received 94,868 preferential votes (with list leader Ingrida Šimonytė obtaining 155,769).

In the 2016 parliamentary election, he was elected to the Seimas in the Centro–Žaliakalnio single-member constituency (No. 13).

Landsbergis was the only TS-LKD candidate to win a single-member Seimas seat in Kaunas during the 2016 elections, as he alone from his party prevailed in a Kaunas constituency that year.

Landsbergis’s wife, Austėja Landsbergienė, is the founder and sole shareholder of the private educational network that includes the “Vaikystės sodas” kindergartens and the Karalienės Mortos mokykla (Queen Morta School) in Vilnius.

As of 2023, data from Lithuania’s State Tax Inspectorate (VMI) showed that Landsbergis’s family declared assets worth roughly €16.7 million (with Landsbergis declaring about €395,100 and his wife Austėja about €16.3 million).

By the end of 2023, the Landsbergis family’s declared net worth remained roughly €18 million (virtually unchanged from 2022). Gabrielius Landsbergis had only about €4,973 in personal bank savings (up ~€3,200 from a year earlier), while Austėja Landsbergienė’s securities investments were valued around €3.618 million. The bulk of their assets (over €12.6 million) was in Austėja’s company shares, and the family’s liabilities had decreased to roughly €175,000 by 2023 (down from nearly €487,000 a year before).

Austėja Landsbergienė’s individual declared assets for 2022 were valued at about €17.7 million, making her one of the wealthiest individuals in Lithuania’s public declarations (her assets included roughly €12.6 million in company shares and €3.6 million in other securities, plus real estate holdings).

In Austėja Landsbergienė’s 2022 asset declaration, a previously undeclared residential property abroad valued at €795,000 appeared for the first time. That year her declaration also showed a drop in the value of her held company shares from €13.1 million to €12.6 million and a decline in cash savings from €631,000 to €466,000, as well as a newly declared €486,000 credit liability.

For 2022, VMI’s published data showed that Austėja Landsbergienė topped the list of wealthiest public officials in Lithuania, overtaking Vidmantas Dambrauskas (her declared assets were about €17.7 million for 2022, slightly down from €18.1 million the year prior).

According to the 2022 asset declarations, Gabrielius Landsbergis’s personal real estate in Lithuania comprised a house valued at about €194,000 and land valued around €175,000.

In 2022, Austėja Landsbergienė’s two main education businesses — the “Vaikystės sodas” kindergarten network and the Karalienės Mortos mokykla (Queen Morta School) — together generated over €2.3 million in net profit, contributing substantially to the family’s income (about €863,200 from Vaikystės sodas and €1,463,100 from Queen Morta School).

By 2021, the Landsbergis family’s declared assets had grown to approximately €18.5 million, before slightly decreasing to about €18.1 million in 2022. The 2022 declarations noted that family savings and stock values had dipped, and Austėja Landsbergienė acquired a foreign real estate property (a house worth around €795,000) during that period.

In Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė’s 2020–2024 government, Landsbergis’s family was by far the wealthiest among the ministers: for example, their ~€16.7 million in declared assets (as of 2020) dwarfed the ~€1.5 million of the next richest minister’s family (Energy Minister Dainius Kreivys).

As of 2019, a rank-and-file Seimas member’s base salary was about €3,356 per month (gross), and by 2024 a Lithuanian government minister earned roughly €4,880 per month (gross) on average. By comparison, Members of the European Parliament received a standardized salary equivalent to 38.5% of a European Court judge’s pay (around €11,255 gross per month in 2025, which was about €8,773 net after EU taxes).

After relatively modest assets early in his career, Landsbergis’s family wealth saw a dramatic rise: their combined declared assets jumped from about €1.9 million in 2018 to roughly €14.5 million in 2019, largely due to Austėja Landsbergienė injecting her education business shares (valued at €12.6 million) into her company’s capital structure.

In 2018, Landsbergis disclosed that his family’s €750,000 investment into a SEB bank private growth fund came from many years’ worth of dividends from Austėja Landsbergienė’s businesses.

He is serving as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at Stanford University for 2025–2026.

After leaving government, he became a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative.

In September 2024, opposition MPs in the Seimas criticized Landsbergis over his family’s purchase of a villa in Greece (valued around €795,000), although he denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

In December 2021, amid a scandal over Belarusian fertilizer transit ("Belaruskalij"), Landsbergis offered to resign as Foreign Minister due to the reputational damage.

In 2020, a political scandal emerged over Austėja Landsbergienė’s purchase of a company called "Krajama" (later "Knowledge Investment") that owned a valuable land plot in Vilnius. The firm, including a land parcel valued around €1.3 million, was acquired for a symbolic price of just one euro. Members of the opposition (LVŽS) questioned the legality of the deal and requested an investigation. Lithuania’s tax authority initially declined to intervene, but soon reversed its decision and opened a tax inquiry into the transaction.

In 2018, Landsbergis’s wife’s school business struck a deal with the BaltCap Infrastructure Fund, but since that transaction was executed by her company (rather than by Landsbergis or his spouse personally), he was not obligated to disclose it in his parliamentary interests declaration.

In April 2017, the Seimas Ethics and Procedures Commission reviewed this situation and concluded that Landsbergis had declared his private interests in accordance with the law, but recommended that he recuse himself from any deliberations directly related to his family’s business in order to avoid a conflict of interest.

His wife’s education companies Karalienės Mortos mokykla and Vaikystės sodas have, since 2013, been operating in a state-owned building in Vilnius leased from the Lietuvos Energija real estate arm NT Valdos under exceptionally favorable terms (no public tender, below-market rent, sublease rights).

On 14 January 2025, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te conferred on Landsbergis the Order of Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon for deepening Taiwan–Lithuania relations.

He was named the 2025 laureate of the Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Award for his “outstanding contribution to the Magnitsky Justice Campaign.”

In September 2024, he received the Transatlantic Leadership Award from the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) for mobilizing support for Ukraine and transatlantic leadership.

In 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awarded Landsbergis the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise (3rd class) for his support to Ukraine.