Warped Tour founder Keven Lyman has confirmed the rumors that Warped Tour will return in 2025. While no specifics were unveiled, Lyman commented in an interview with Pollstar: "We have something cooking for 2025. Details should be ready in a few weeks."
Lyman's comments follow a report by Rock Feed, who revealed in a recent video that multiple sources familiar with the matter believed Warped Tour to be returning in 2025. The return will be overseen by Lyman and apparently Live Nation, who have not offered a comment yet.
"According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, Warped Tour will celebrate its anniversary with a series of festivals next year when Warped Tour returns in 2025," said Rock Feed's Brian Storm at the time. "The rock festival will now be overseen by Live Nation, although Festival founder Kevin Lyman is said to be heavily involved. A request for comment from Live Nation was not returned."
Warped Tour originally ran as a full-on touring festival between 1995 and 2018, with some 25th anniversary one-off shows happening in 2019. Lyman teased a possible return of the festival under a different name for 2021, but of course the pandemic got in the way. There was also talk of Attila's Chris Fronzak buying the festival, though that never seems to have come to fruition.
As Lynman said to Kerrang! in a 2019 interview regarding the shutdown of the festival:
"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."
