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 Stadium Festival Grounds on June 14 and June 15, 2025, and make its way west to Marina Green Park in Long Beach, California, on July 26 and July 27, finally closing out in Orlando, Florida, on Nov. 15 and 16 at Tinker Field. “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.
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.
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.”