Bringing back the Vans Warped Tour is no longer just a rumor. It really will happen.
The music festival brought music lovers of all ages together to spend a day seeing as many of their favorite bands as they could.
This American music festival was full of rock, alternative, pop-punk, indie rock and other similar genres. I had the chance to go several times growing up before it ended. It was one of the things I looked forward to for summer break. Music has always been a huge part of my life. I loved being able to spend all day seeing a lot of my favorite bands as well as finding new ones to listen to.
The Warped Tour began in 1995 and traveled around the United States and Canada for 24 years. It helped jump-start careers for a lot of punk and emo acts through the years, including Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, Katy Perry, Paramore and many more.
It ended in 2019 because founder Kevin Lyman thought it lost the sense of community. He added that playing the Warped Tour also came with its own stigma, revealing that some bands turned down-playing the festival because they didn’t want to be known as “a Warped act.”
There’s been a spark of hope. Rumors have started to circulate about the possibility of it returning. Lyman hinted at its return while doing an interview with Pollstar in September.
“We have something cooking for 2025,” Lyman told the online magazine. “Details should be ready in a few weeks.”
Fans will have to wait for details about the lineup, dates and locations. But man, am I excited that Vans Warped Tour could really be returning.
It’s become clear that bringing back a music festival like this still has a market and demand. This was shown with the success of the When We Were Young festival that took place in Vegas in 2022. It had a similar setup to the Warped Tour, featuring many artists over a weekend in a huge arena, the Las Vegas Festival grounds.
The first year was said to be a blast and a great throwback party for the festival-missing millennials.
As someone who grew up going to the Warped Tour, I really wanted to go to ‘When We Were Young’. But due to the cost of concert tickets, travel and hotel, I couldn’t make it. Bringing back how Warped Tour traveled throughout the States would help relieve a lot of that stress for many fans.
I’ve talked to some people and read online how a lot of those who went to a Warped Tour show enjoyed it and now look at it in a nostalgic way.
For those who couldn’t go when they were younger, they now have adult money to spend on tickets.
The Warped Tour had an immense cultural effect on punk, emo and alternative kids in those 24 years. The bands that played in their early days had illustrious careers in the genre.
If the reports of a comeback of Warped Tour are true, you can count me in.
