Warped Tour Founder Kevin Lyman ‘Didn’t Want To Create Nostalgia’ When He Resurrected It For Its 30th Anniversary

Kevin Lyman remembers the strong pushback he got in the 1980s from local politicians when he would attempt to host punk shows in Long Beach, Calif., which then (like now) drew mischievous teens and young adults from all around Southern California with its notorious skate and punk culture. So naturally, over 40 years later, Lyman chose the beachside city as one of three sites to host the 30th-anniversary edition of his Vans Warped Tour — the famed touring punk rock festival he founded — this year.

“We outlasted them all,” Lyman says two months after the two-day Long Beach festival sold out 80,000 tickets with performances from Pennywise, Less Than Jake, The Vandals and the city’s own Sublime.

Kevin Lyman will participate in a panel at Billboard‘s Live Music Summit, held Nov. 3 in Los Angeles. For tickets and more information, click here.

Today, Warped has the local buy-in it once lacked. In June, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson celebrated Warped’s return at an event honoring a new street named Sublime Way. “He goes, ‘I’m so excited to bring you the biggest punk rock show ever to Long Beach,’ ” Lyman recalls. “I was with Joe [Escalante] from The Vandals and a few other band people, and we all looked at each other. I go, ‘Remember when the politicians used to run on how they were going to get rid of punk in Long Beach?’ ”

Alongside Long Beach, Washington, D.C., and Orlando, Fla., were named as host cities for the anniversary events, which according to Warped sold a combined 240,000 tickets — making Warped one of the most successful festival runs of the year. (After summer plays in D.C. and Long Beach, the fest will stage its Orlando shows on Nov. 15 and 16.) And Warped, which took a break between 2019 and 2025, already has tickets on sale for its 2026 editions in D.C. and Long Beach, with Lyman hinting that international dates are also in the works. According to him, roughly 80% of next year’s acts have already been booked.

Warped launched in 1995 and grew to roughly 35 dates a summer in the United States and Canada, adding international stops in Australia and the United Kingdom throughout the years. The punk gathering was part of a spate of touring festivals that emerged in the 1990s, including Lollapalooza, H.O.R.D.E. and Lilith Fair. H.O.R.D.E. and Lilith Fair called it quits before the new millennium, while Lollapalooza eventually settled down to one main location in Chicago with frequent international editions. But Warped had impressive longevity. After being held annually for more than 20 years, it executed its final cross-country trek in 2018 and marked its 25th anniversary with three shows in 2019.

By then, Lyman was burned out — and felt fans and the industry were taking Warped for granted. He continued to work on other live events and philanthropic endeavors while pivoting to teaching full time at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. Post-pandemic, he noticed his students were struggling to connect with one another and decided a new generation could use Warped.

Young people “were so isolated from each other. We’re in a society where we’re bombarded with negativity,” he says. “If you could create that atmosphere of positivity within a parking lot, they start to come together and you can affect people.”

Warped’s return coincided with a renewed interest in the punk and emo genres. Early Warped bookings such as blink-182, Green Day, Weezer and Fall Out Boy have recently sold out stadiums, while the Las Vegas package festival When We Were Young — which featured a slew of Warped alums including Alkaline Trio, Dashboard Confessional and Good Charlotte — became a post-pandemic hit.

For Warped’s 30th anniversary, Lyman teamed with the Live Nation-owned Insomniac (producers of EDM festivals such as Electric Daisy Carnival and Beyond Wonderland) for the event’s biggest dates yet. The shows featured larger stages, merchandise tables for every band, an on-site Warped Tour Museum and a Charity Circle with 25 nonprofit organizations. But in keeping with its original ethos, two-day general admission tickets started at $149 to keep the festival accessible, and, in old Warped style, set times for the lineups of more than 90 bands were not announced ahead of time. In Long Beach, gates opened at 9 a.m., two hours earlier than planned, to accommodate the mass of fans who had arrived early. By 11 a.m., more than 30,000 attendees were inside, providing uncharacteristically large audiences for early acts.

“There’s a whole new energy of bands out there that Warped can be a part of the puzzle of their development,” Lyman says, pointing to standout performances from rising artists on 2025’s lineup like LØLØ, Honey Revenge and Magnolia Park. “I did not want to create a legacy show. I didn’t want to create nostalgia. You’re, of course, going to have that. You’re going to tap into your history. But for me, I was looking forward to the future of bands and community.”

Over the 30 years of Warped, Lyman has seen bands grow from opening acts to headliners — bands that the festival booked early in their careers include My Chemical Romance, No Doubt, Paramore and Panic! at the Disco — and he has witnessed kids transition from waiting hours at the gates to producing the tours themselves. The tour has also been a critical mechanism for educating a generation (or two) of young people about punk music and culture. “You become a very large classroom. That’s what we used to do across the country,” he says. “We’re never going to go across the country with 35 shows again. Physically, I couldn’t do it, and physically, I would insist on being there. I’d have a shallow grave somewhere in a parking lot in America at this point, but we’ll keep doing what we can.”

Lyman’s grateful to have built a career on bringing people together over great music. (He even did his own autograph signings at the most recent Warped dates.) And as the 64-year-old steward of the event ages, he tries to instill one motto in the youth he encounters: “You can do good business and do good with your business.”

This story appears in the Oct. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.