Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is poised to pick its next leader at the start of October, looking to replace departing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba after his resignation on Sunday in the wake of major electoral setbacks.

The party will choose its next leader on October 4, committee leaders said Tuesday. The candidate could become the country’s next prime minister if they win the support of a majority of MPs in Japan’s parliament.

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Ishiba took over the LDP in October 2024 from Fumio Kishida, whose leadership was plagued by corruption allegations and a cost-of-living crisis. Within a week of winning the seat, Ishiba called a snap election, telling reporters it was “important for the new administration to be judged by the people as soon as possible”.

But bruising election results that month, along with a subsequent defeat in upper-house elections in July, prompted questions about Ishiba’s leadership and the future of the LDP. The party has governed Japan for all but four years since 1955, but in recent years has faced mounting pressure over soaring rice prices, declining birth rates and immigration concerns.

After resisting calls to resign, Ishiba – a 68-year-old centrist who had long sought Japan’s top job – stepped down on Sunday, saying he would “like to pass the baton to the next generation”.

“I think PM Ishiba was seen as someone who was unrepresentative of where the LDP and its conservative credentials were. And it was time for him to be pushed out,” Stephen Nagy, a visiting fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, told Al Jazeera. He added that Ishiba wasn’t seen by the country as a “strong steward”.

The left-leaning Mainichi Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading newspapers, wrote in an editorial Tuesday that the LDP’s “status as a true national party is now in jeopardy”.

“If the upcoming leadership race devolves into an insular power struggle, the public will abandon the party for good,” it said.

Ishiba will retain his role as the country’s leader until his party holds the election to replace him. The next prime minister will be the country’s fourth in five years.

Several figures who previously ran for the LDP’s leadership will likely run again, according to Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, including Sanae Takaichi, a veteran fiscal dove and right-winger who was defeated by Ishiba in 2024, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi and former party Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi, described by some as a “Trump whisperer”.

Also in contention is Farm Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, the son of popular former premier Junichiro Koizumi, who was in power from 2001-2006, and became a harsh critic of atomic energy after the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011.

Ichiro Aisawa, the head of the LDP election committee, said a notice would go out on September 22, followed by a 12-day campaigning period and counting of votes.