It’s official: the Vans Warped Tour is making a comeback. On October 17, Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman confirmed that the festival will return in 2025 after a six-year hiatus to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Deviating from the traditional format of a traveling ‘punk rock summer camp’, the 2025 edition of Warped Tour will function as a pop-up festival taking place over two days each in just three cities. It starts in Washington, DC (June 14-15), continues to Long Beach, California (July 26-27) and then ends in Orlando (November 15-16). Should the three-city festival be a success, Lyman said he would consider adding additional stops to the tour in future years.
Prior to the festival’s hiatus, Lyman’s Warped Tour came under scrutiny as members of several bands were accused of sexual assault and misconduct, including towards minors, during the shows.
Effectively launching the careers of pop-punk, pop-rock and alternative rock mainstays like Blink-182, New Found Glory, Paramore, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, Warped Tour has a rich legacy of giving emerging bands the platform to share their music and connect with fans across the continent. Genre standouts like the Black Eyed Peas and 23-year-old, pre-fame Katy Perry have also taken the festival stage.
For many fans, an added benefit of Warped Tour was the close interaction with their favorite artists. There was a real possibility that they could take some photos and chat with the singers at the merchandise stand, if they waited long enough. Hanging out with the band privately after the festival wrapped was also not planned – although some of those interactions have fueled the allegations of misconduct.
“Warped Tour is like everywhere: there are creeps and there are also good people. And there are plenty of people who just need help doing the right thing more often,” Kira-Lynn Ferderber, the founder of Safer Scenes, a bystander intervention workshop brought to Warped Tour in 2017, told Yahoo Entertainment. The organization taught attendees how to safely interrupt all forms of harassment.
In 2015, Lyman told writer and musician Paul Adler that while Warped Tour “will not tolerate artists who do wrong,” they “will be dealt with if there is evidence.” He doubled down on this stance in a 2017 interview with Billboard, in which he attributed sexual misconduct to “being part of the culture.” In the wake of these allegations, Lyman teamed up with the now-defunct nonprofit known as A Voice for the Innocent to teach bands on Warped Tour how to “handle themselves” on the road, and to provide space for those who have done that. those affected by sexual violence, to share their stories.
On October 18, Lyman came under fire again. The official X account for Warped Tour featured Falling in Reverse frontman Ronnie Radke, who was previously accused of sexual assault.
Ronald Radke, our king…you dropped this 👑
— Vans Warped Tour (@VansWarpedTour) October 18, 2024
Lyman and a representative for the Vans Warped Tour did not immediately respond to Yahoo Entertainment’s request for comment.
Ahead of the 2017 Warped Tour, Ferderber connected with Shawna Potter, the singer of the hardcore punk band War on Women, after hearing that she wanted to highlight feminist causes during the tour. Ferderber joined forces with War on Women to not only educate attendees, but also support sexual assault survivors on each tour date.
“I heard many stories of sexual violence during the tour dates, which is unfortunately common at live events in any genre,” Ferderber said. “What’s particularly unfortunate about Warped Tour and other alternative spaces is that the sexist brothers have convinced themselves and their fans that they are somehow punk and edgy by hating women. It’s actually so mainstream and boring, but it’s sold as rebellion.”
Mariel Loveland was the frontman of the pop-rock band Candy Hearts from 2009 to 2017. They played Warped Tour in 2015.
“My experience as a woman on Warped Tour was really difficult,” Loveland, who is now the lead singer of the band Best Ex, told Yahoo. “There was a clear culture – not just on Warped but on all those pop-punk tours – of keeping your mouth shut and not making a fuss about anything.. Be kind, be grateful, be happy, even if your traveling companion decides to sexually harass you, call you a slut, or grab your ass. Even if men verbally abuse you or treat you differently than your male traveling companions.”
Playing Warped Tour was “a dream come true” for Loveland, but she thinks the criticism the festival is receiving for failing to protect female attendees and performers is justified.
“When I was on Warped, I openly watched bands talking about how they couldn’t hire women or have women on their bus because it would make their partners uncomfortable,” she said. “If your behavior towards women makes your partner uncomfortable, don’t you consider that a big problem? This was normal.”
Theo Kogan performed during Warped Tour in 1999 and 2000 with her punk rock band Lunachicks. Although she felt respected by all the bands she was around, Kogan told Yahoo that she remembers both years being “very tough on testosterone” and “predominantly male.”
“The way some male/masc bands/artists treated their young femme/female fans at the time was extremely distasteful,” she said. According to Kogan, showing their breasts and throwing their bras on stage were among the requests of these bands. “It was quite accepted by the guys in charge there, and no one wanted to stop it.”
Kogan hopes festivals like Warped Tour encourage both bands and male attendees to be respectful.
“I’m tired of how many women are told to protect themselves, to be careful, to dress this way or that way to avoid harassment,” she said. “Boys and men should be taught and forced to be respectful towards women/females. They need to know that it is not okay to grab people’s bodies in the pit and while stage diving and crowd surfing.”
Ferderber has not yet been invited to Warped Tour, but she believes bystander intervention workshops should continue to be available at live shows, including Warped Tour.
“I’m sure there are also young women of the next generation in all the cities Warped is going to next summer, and I hope they feel safe in their scenes and can be part of creating inclusive cultures at shows,” said them. “We really needed it in 2017, and we’ll need it again in 2025, I’m sure.”
To create a safer space, Loveland urges male band members to do their part.
“Men in bands need to take the lead. They should not stand around, twiddle their thumbs and keep quiet when they see inappropriate behavior,” she said. “The most punk rock thing you can do is say, ‘I don’t care if we lose money or fans, we’re not going to tolerate this kind of harmful behavior.’ I made that decision for myself years ago and I urge my colleagues to do the same.”
