The Vans Warped Tour has announced they will be bringing their famed rock festival, which had its last showing in 2019. And yes, they are bringing it to Long Beach for two days as part of its 30th anniversary. Tickets for the July 26 and 27, 2025 show go on sale on Oct. 24 at 9AM.
“This is big,” Mayor Rex Richardson said on social media. “This will be the biggest music event in Long Beach history. And you won’t want to miss it.”
The Mayor is right: Having the Vans Warped Tour here is huge.
The iconic rock festival started in 1995. And it has quite the history with its lineups. Green Day. Paramore. Blink-182. New Found Glory. Less than Jake. Fall Out Boy. And yes, even Katy Perry. For its 2025 iteration, the tour will hit up three cities: Washington D.C. in June, Long Beach in July, and Orlando in November. Warped Tour embarked on its so-called final-goodbye-this-is-a-funeral tour in 2018. Come 2024, Vans Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman announced they would do a 30th Anniversary revamp.
“Since 1997, I said I was hoping that there was some kid in a garage that was going to come out and kick Kevin Lyman’s ass someday, and put on a better festival,” Lyman told Rolling Stone, who broke the news. “People start remembering once something’s gone that it was important, it was fun—and I’m hoping to recapture a lot of that again.”
The lineup has yet to be announced.
The push for more live music in Long Beach is one of the most defining characteristics of the city’s cultural landscape 2024.
Mayor Richardson and our entertainment leaders have consistently presented a strong push toward reinvigorating live music in Long Beach. This follows the disaster that was the failed Vault relaunch by Millworks—handing over the famed venue’s keys to a church rather than its promise to keep it a venue—and Goldenvoice stepping away from its use of the Queen Mary grounds just as it was garnering regular programming.
But there have been major alterations since.
There’s been Insomniac, who has turned those very Queen Mary grounds into an electronic music haven, with Day Trip, Dreamstate, and Apocalypse all drawing tens of thousands of festival goers. There’s been Cali Vibez. And yes, there’s even been Coastal Country Jam, which vacated its Huntington Beach home in favor of Long Beach.
Then there’s the mayor’s amphitheater proposal, dubbed the “Long Beach Bowl.” think Greek Theater in capacity and Hollywood Bowl in style. And it will be by the Queen Mary with the DTLB skyline as its backdrop. With the potential to draw from a larger pool of artists with such a distinctly unique venue, the city has taken a significant step toward making the Bowl a reality.
The Vans Warped Tour will be along the shoreline waterfront in Long Beach on July 26 and 27, 2025. Tickets go on sale on Oct. 24 here.
