Thousands of people crowded through the capital to demand that the vote be canceled until the entire ruling elite step down and the military quit politics.
They chanted "No election tomorrow" and held up banners reading "You have destroyed the country."
Algeria's political stalemate between the enormous protest movement and a state increasingly dominated by the military has put at stake the political future of Africa's largest country, a nation of 40 million people and a major gas supplier to Europe.
All five of the state-approved candidates running on Thursday are former senior officials linked to the former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika whom the army forced aside in April in response to the protests.