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Kevin Lyman Confirms Return Of Warped Tour In 2025: Exclusive
Warped Tour founder Keven Lyman has confirmed reports that Vans Warped Tour is set to return in 2025, which will mark the traveling festival’s 30th anniversary.
Fans will have to wait for details about the lineup, dates and locations.
“We have something cooking for 2025. Details should be ready in a few weeks,” Lyman told Pollstar.
Lyman graced the cover of Pollstar in 2018 in honor of the final fully-fledged, cross-country Warped Tour, which wrapped in early August of that year at Coral Sky Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach, Florida, with Pennywise performing “Bro Hymn.” The trek played 38 shows and grossed more than $19.4 million, with 542,908 tickets sold. The tour placed at No. 64 on Pollstar’s 2018 Year End Top 200 North American Tours and No. 99 on Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours.
In celebration of Warped Tour’s 25th anniversary, Warped Tour put on events in three cities in 2019: Cleveland; Atlantic City, New Jersey and Mountain View, California.
Though Warped Tour was known as the launching pad for punk and rock bands like Paramore, A Day To Remember and Simple Plan, as well as sustaining the careers of veteran acts including Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish, Pennywise and NOFX, the festival also grew to include hip-hop and pop stars over the years. Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, and Ice-T appeared at Warped in 1999, Katy Perry performed there in 2008 and Demi Lovato in 2010, among others.
Perry praised Warped Tour, along with social media platform MySpace during her MTV VMA speech on Sept. 11 accepting the Video Vanguard Award, saying these were “bygone places where I found a voice, identity and a community so early on” (via Loudwire).
That same day, YouTube rock news channel Rock Feed announced that Warped Tour would be making a comeback in 2025 with a series of festivals “according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.” Rock Feed added, “The rock festival will now be overseen by Live Nation, although Festival founder Kevin Lyman is said to be heavily involved.”
Earlier this year Lyman teamed up with KMGMT’s Mike Kaminsky and Hopeless Records’ Eric Tobin to launch idobi Radio Summer School, a new traveling festival with artist development and community at its core. The pop punk and alternative rock fest played more than 25 dates across the U.S. in July and August with a lineup featuring Stand Atlantic, Magnolia Park, The Home Team, Scene Queen, Letdown., and Honey Revenge.
Following in the footsteps of Warped Tour’s social activism, a portion of each ticket sale went to charity under the Unite the United umbrella.
In late August, nonprofit Save The Music announced that idobi Radio Summer School Tour raised $15,000 for the organization, “providing approximately 1,500 students access to learn an instrument.”