To say that Vans Warped Tour changed the fabric of music and pop culture is a serious understatement. The once annual summer traveling festival helped spawn some of pop-punk, metalcore, and post-hardcore’s biggest bands. Can you imagine seeing a band play the smallest stage possible and then witnessing that same band headline a thousand cap venues the next year? It happened, and it happened frequently.
It can also be said, though, that the summer touring festival had run its course. With occasional controversies surrounding some of the bands and musicians that were invited to play the festival during some years, coupled with the fact that running a tour on a larger scale like this had many moving parts, it’s not a surprise that it was put to rest.
However, unconfirmed sources are saying Vans Warped Tour is indeed being reactivated in 2025. Temper your excitement, though, because there’s quite a few caveats that may hinder things.
This is likely to be not an entire cross country tour, but instead a larger scale festival with 2 to 3 dates that looks more like other festivals like When We Were Young, etc. And according to these unconfirmed sources, the prices will likely be much much higher than the $40 to $50 that Vans Warped Tour used to be. In fact, pricing could be over the $200 mark, which leads us to another problem – those ticket prices are not in line with the original idea in spirit of Vans Warped Tour.
It would be a necessity if they’re trying to get huge headliners, though. Fall Out Boy and Paramore aren’t headlining for 2005 prices, mind you. And when you consider the pricing structure of the festivals that have acted as pseudo-Warped Tour replacements, it does seem like that’s what will be in store for any revival of Warped Tour. It really does beg the question, though – do we actually need Vans Warped Tour to come back if it’s vastly different than the original? Only you can answer that.
