The rumored 2025 return of the ‘Warped Tour‘ has been confirmed by its founder Kevin Lyman. Last week saw Rock Feed break the news that the once annual touring festival would be resurrected in the new year. However, the aforementioned publication also stated that Live Nation Entertainment would be involved in this version of the fest alongside Lyman.
Industry rumors also suggest that ‘Warped Tour‘ won’t be emerging in its traditional incarnation of a touring festival, but rather a few destination festivals marking its 30th anniversary. As Live Nation have already somewhat cornered this format with their annual ‘When We Were Young‘ festival, it remains to be seen how this return of the ‘Warped Tour‘ will play out.
Speaking to Pollstar this week, Lyman briefly confirmed the news of the festival’s return, stating, “We have something cooking for 2025. Details should be ready in a few weeks.”
Outside of a trio of destination festivals in 2019, the once annual summer institution of all things pop-punk, emo, metalcore, rap and more was last staged as a touring festival back in 2018. In 2019, Lyman told Kerrang! of the decision to bring the festival to an end:
“It got very frustrating around 2017. I was challenged by the fractured fan base, the fractured band base, the sense of community and what I got involved in this for, and what brought me into punk rock that I said ‘you know, if it’s changed this much, maybe it’s time for me to wind this thing down.’
2017, no matter who I put up, it was like ‘F that band, F that band, where’s this band?’ It was just like, what happened to the acceptance of music and that love of music? And I realized that we had pushed the audience down to a young level—’Warped got known as a young [tour.] But I did that because I wanted to young people to get exposed to this music, to maybe support independent music for a longer time.”
He ultimately added:
“Everyone looked at me like ‘He stopped ‘Warped Tour” and in our business we always look at it as money. First thing they go to: money. ‘He’s not making any money.’ And that was not it. That was not it. ‘Warped Tour‘ was not feeding my soul and my heart as much as you put in. Because ‘Warped Tour‘ was 90% about the community and 10% about the money, it really was.
And some people I’m sure will say bullshit, but it’s true. I built that because I wanted to keep people coming to see live music. I wanted to build a community… And I’d lost that, that spirit was taken out of me for multiple reasons.”
