Introduction: Vans Warped Tour

Founder Kevin Lyman gives an inside look
at the iconic festival’s comeback
ahead of its 30th anniversary

Lace up your Vans sneakers, the Warped
Tour is officially returning in 2025.

The iconic punk-rock festival,
which started in 1995, will take
over parking lots in three cities

for two-day shows in celebration of its 30th anniversary.
Warped Tour embarked on its
“final” cross-country trek in 2018 and hit two
cities the following year to commemorate its 25th anniversary.

“Since 1997, I said I was hoping that there was
some kid in a garage that was going to
come out and kick Kevin Lyman’s ass someday,
and put on a better festival,”

Vans Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman
tells Rolling Stone. No one has yet to
heed the call, so the founder took
matters into his own hands.

“People start remembering once something’s
gone that it was important, it was
fun — and I’m hoping to recapture a
lot of that again,” he says.

Warped Tour 2025 will kick off in Washington,
D.C., at the RFK Campus on June 14 and
June 15, 2025, and make its way west to the
Shoreline Waterfront in Long Beach,

California, on July 26 and July 27,
finally closing out in Orlando, Florida,
on Nov. 15 and 16 at Camping World Stadium Campus.

“My body won’t take riding around on a tour
bus for 40 cities,” Lyman says of the
decision to keep Warped Tour 2025 contained to three cities.

But he’s not totally closed off to the
idea of adding more dates in the coming
years if the 2025 iteration is successful.
“If it works, we’ll look to the
future to do more,” he adds.

The festival’s lineup is yet to be announced,
but Lyman promises a robust mix of past
Warped Tour bands and new artists.

“We’re getting very, very selective
in trying to find some unique twists to the lineup,”
he says. There will be 70 to 100 bands

joining at each stop next year.
Some of the most notable acts from previous years
include Blink-182, Green Day, Fall Out Boy,

Paramore, and even Katy Perry.
Bands like Less Than Jake and

Simple Plan have become Warped
Tour staples with more than 10 appearances each.

While Warped Tour 2025 wants to bring
fans the most compelling elements of
its glory days, there is no aim to be

A nostalgia fest. “I’ve always felt we
need to pay homage to the past, but we’re
looking to the future of the artists and the

community,” Lyman says. Of course,
launching rising artists is embedded in
the Warped Tour DNA. The festival is

planning a weekly rollout of the lineup
in order to highlight smaller bands and
musicians who may get overlooked on a larger festival poster.

Another piece of Warped Tour’s unique
energy has always been the ticket’s price point.
For Warped Tour 2025, two-day tickets
will start at $149.98 (a $119.99 ticket,
with $29.99 in fees). Ticket presales begin
next week on Oct. 24 at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. here.

The accessible price point is a huge point
of pride for Lyman. Las Vegas-based festival
When We Were Young, an emo nostalgia event
with a similar audience, has tickets that
start at $325 (before fees) for a single-day,
general admission ticket.

While many factors went into the Warped Tour price,
Lyman credits the festival’s partnership with Insomniac
for helping keep tickets on the lower range of
comparative events. Founded by Pasquale Rotella,
Insomniac is a seasoned music-event-promotion
company that has masterminded some of the
largest music festivals in the world.

“[Lyman’s] been really committed to making
this about the people, and making sure that
people can afford to come,” Rotella says.
In response to rising ticket fees and exorbitant
festival prices that have taken over the music industry,
Lyman was steadfast about keeping
Warped Tour 2025 cost inclusive.
“It really starts with Kevin making that step,
and holding his ground, and having that
confidence in the community,” Rotella adds.

That confidence has paid off already.
A lot of musicians who helped make Warped
Tour a signature festival for the
pop-punk and emo genres have also
stepped up to bring the heyday energy back for 2025.
“The bands get some credit here too,”
the Insomniac founder says.
“Some of them had to call their teams and say,
‘No, I want to do this.’”

Lyman also highlighted the camaraderie of bands from
the music scene that made the Warped Tour thrive,
saying, “It’s band members talking to band members,
and people saying, ‘I’m on, aren’t you on?’”

Warped Tour’s strong sense of community will be
front and center for the 2025 return.
“Making a community strong can’t be just an individual thing,”
Lyman says, “It takes everyone out there.”
As an associate professor at the USC Thornton School of Music,
the festival founder connects with young people
on a daily basis and wants to make sure
they feel just as welcome as older,
returning Warped Tour fans.

The festival grounds will once again be filled with
tents from nonprofit organizations,
individual bands with their own merchandise,
and sponsorship booths.

Lyman is especially excited to bring new nonprofits on board.
“There’s a lot of young people doing great stuff
out there in the world, and we want to give
them a place and help boost them,”
he says. Additionally,
“new immersive elements” and
community-building events like the
Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands will be a part of Warped Tour 2025.

Of course, at the start of each show date,
fans will be welcomed by the sight of the inflatable,
daily set list. It’s all part of Lyman’s
fastidious plan to bring back the charm of the Vans Warped Tour.
Even 30 years in, his promise remains refreshingly simple:
“It’ll always remind you of that parking lot,
that backyard party.
That’s what Warped Tour was.”