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INDUSTRY REPORT # 67
Catching up with Kevin Lyman
WARPED TOUR 2026
June 15th, 2026 by Traci Turner
When the Vans Warped Tour returned in 2025 after six years away, we rejoiced! It was of course a success and returns this year with additional countries added, leading to what may become global domination! Ok, perhaps it is not THAT dramatic yet, but anything Kevin Lyman puts his mind to tends to rule the world.
This past weekend, Warped kicked off 2026 in Washington D.C. Their return to Long Beach will be a two-day event, July 25th-26th. Orlando also gets their Warped again, November 14th-15th.
Added to the calendar this year are two international dates: Montreal, Canada on August 21st-22nd, and Mexico City, Mexico on September 12th-13th.
THE REEL BIG RETURN
The lineup for Long Beach is incredible as always. If you are headed to Shoreline Waterfront, you can catch performances from Hoobastank, Jimmy Eat World, Jinjer, MxPx, Papa Roach, Simple Plan, Yelawolf, The Starting Line, Thrice, Story of the Year, The Ataris, The Used, The Story So Far, Bowling for Soup, 3OH!3, Flogging Molly, We Came As Romans, Plain White T’s, Taking Back Sunday, Lagwagon, Mad Caddies, Phantom Planet, Bad Cop / Bad Cop, Carolesdaughter, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Glassjaw, Sleeping With Sirens, Reel Big Fish and many, many more.
All of the usual Warped Tour features will return as well – the Battle of Bands, bands at merch tents, canned food drive, party vibes, and of course, set times announced the day of.
The master of organization himself, Kevin Lyman, took a break from the chaos to chat about life since last year and what to expect in 2026.
Traci: How is your neighborhood after the fires? I know it was heavily damaged and you were involved in some major benefit shows.
Kevin: Things are being built; it’s slow, but you see some progress. That’s all you could do, and everyone’s in a different phase of where it’s at. We’re gonna start seeing some of the homes around our street, and I think a few of them are probably will be done by the end of the year. Two years to get some of the first homes done, but I think there’s been 13 or 14 homes completed now.
Traci: You’re teaching five classes at Thornton School of Music at USC, plus you have the Departure Fest, To Write Love mental health movement documentary, benefit concerts, tours at the Punk Rock Museum, Summer School Tour, plus Warped – the longest-running North American festival tour. Do you ever sleep?
Kevin: I’ve got a lot of good people around and that makes some time for yourself too. So it’s all good. I’m lucky to be in a position like this. I was just with some people who are around my age, who are kind of in that limbo world, that are like, “Wow, how am I still relevant?” It’s hard to hear those stories. But I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing until I’m not, I guess!
Traci: Last year you and I talked ahead of the 30th anniversary of Warped and the shows were obviously a success. I’m looking at the numbers from the charity collections. Can you tell me the difference between fan donations of $83,000 and guest donations of $34,000?
Kevin: Fan donations, they’re donating to charities and things at the booths and on site. The guest list donations, we charge $20 for guest list tickets, and we donate that to the food bank.
Traci: And then the nonprofits had more than $250,000!
Kevin: Yeah, the nonprofits collected $251,000, I think.
Traci: That’s freaking amazing, and then now you’re doing it again.”’
Kevin: We’re doing it again! First one next week. (Interview held before the Washington D.C. Warped.)
Traci: D.C. has an awesome lineup – I mean, they all do.
Kevin: I think the lineups are fantastic. I think we’re alternative programming to the UFC fight on the lawn of the White House. I think this would be looked at as almost like year one of Warped Tour. Last year was the excitement of coming back. People were just buying sight unseen. Then this year it’s like, “We’ll see who’s at the show.” We’ll probably hit 90% capacity in D.C., which I think will be a nice show. Would that 10% have been there on a different weekend? I don’t know.
He continued, What I’m really excited to see is it continuing what I think was a lot of new people coming to Warped Tour and people who got turned on to Warped Tour. And maybe some of those fans went for one year in a different phase of their lives and they’re not really going to fest – they went to one festival and like, it’s hard to go to a festival at a certain part of age of your time of your life.
Traci: Yes, I’m there. (laughing)
Kevin: Yeah, physically festivals are hard! So I’m really interested to see what the audience is like a week from now.
Traci: Is there anything different or what do they need to know for this year?
Kevin: Well, we’re continuing to build off of some of those artists that we brought back for the first time last year. We’re going to bring them back. We’re bringing back a few things. We’ve got wrestling, we’ve got some of these other attractions we’re bringing. We teamed up with Emo Night. We’re trying to build more on these community events prior to the event. These free events that we did went so well. They went so well in Orlando that we’re building off of those community type things. We’ll have a restaurant week in Long Beach again, and I hear there’s gonna be 25 restaurants that will have Warped-themed menus items that week.
He went on: We’re looking at doing a couple free shows. A lot of the festivals, they do some of their pre-parties and things, but usually they’re a ticketed event. We’re trying to build things where people can just come and hang out, if that makes sense.
Traci: The comments that I see on Reddit and social media are how the Warped Tour price point is excellent. I know that’s so hard right now – I mean, I know it’s always challenging anyway, but you guys are really making it happen.
Kevin: It’s definitely tricky, but I think it’s tricky for people to go to festivals, to be honest. In D.C., we were supposed to go up another $10 on Sunday. I think our ticket price was supposed to go to the next level. We just decided today don’t raise the ticket price. People are struggling, you know. We’ll be okay; that extra $10 might mean someone has enough gas to come down to the show.
Traci: Yeah, and a lot of things suck right now, so it’s nice to have something good, like Warped, to look forward to and escape the suck.
Kevin: That’s what we hope. We can hopefully give you a couple great days this summer in a time that is really hard. There’s a lot of unease out there, unease in the world, and I’m hoping to give people a safe, fun place to let loose.
Traci: Last year you said you wanted to expand internationally, and you’re doing that! This year you added Mexico and Canada.
Kevin: Yeah, that’s really fun. I’m really having fun with that. Mexico, you always need a great person in the market that understands Warped. A gentleman named Miguel Ramos approached me about doing Warp down there, he works with one of the big promoting companies down there. Other people at his company wouldn’t understand Warped Tour. You have to understand Warped and he totally gets it. So he’s doing all these activities like community events.
He continued: We’re doing like a punk rock swap meet and flea market that we’re sponsoring down there for all the little independent labels in Mexico. We’re trying to show them that we’re doing more skate, we’re doing stuff skating-wise and street skating, bringing in the Latin bands. It’s a good time. I mean, they’re our southern neighbors. You bring it together through music. The response is great if you just take it from a straight tickets-wise. We’re approaching the 30,000 tickets sold in Mexico and going up to Montreal, which it’s a great city, Montreal. I just feel like it’s really cool that we could go do that because it’s just music brings people together.
Traci: You have shows July, August, September. It is almost like you’re laying the groundwork for a whole year of Warped shows.
Kevin: Well, it might not be a bad thing! If I could figure out how to connect it all and drive my van from city to city, it’d be super fun. I mean, we don’t know. I’ve good partners and they’ve been great to work with. I don’t know if next year would be the year to expand again or just build on what we’ve done, to be honest. I mean, that might be hard to expand in a tough year like this, just tough environment, right? But a lot of people have been inquiring, I get calls all the time from countries that are interested in bringing Warped Tour back. I’m glad it still has a good spot in people’s hearts.
Traci: My last two, somewhat tough, questions: I know you’re not supposed to pick favorites, but are there bands that you’re going to put your phone on do not disturb, turn your walkie off, and go see?
Kevin: I think Rise Against is always that band now that you can go, and they have so much to say. But Grandson, I’m super excited about Grandson playing Warped Tour. The Front Bottoms. Yeah, those two I’m really excited about right now.
Traci: The other tough question: If you had to pick one, which merch item would you buy?
Kevin: Which one would I buy, and which one are people so excited about? The windbreakers went over great last year. Windbreakers were great. I think we put a lot of time into our merch, and it covers the gamut of maybe that older audience as well as that younger crowd. And I might have to get myself a windbreaker this year.
Traci: Well, you know we have affection for you and Warped and it makes me so happy to see how positively everybody talks about the tour and you.
Kevin: Well, thank you. I try to instill in everyone that works with me, you know, we’re not brain surgeons, we’re not curing cancer, but we can do good things to help our community. It’s not all fun and games all the time, but we’re very lucky to get to do what we do. And the fans are the ones that allow us to continue doing what we do, so let’s make sure we take care of them and give them the best show we possibly can. It’s not a complicated philosophy, really.
Traci: Which hat are you gonna wear to Long Beach?
Kevin: I don’t know, I’ve been wearing my same cowboy hat a lot right now.
Traci: That’s how we find you!
Kevin: Yeah, probably keep that one and keep this one in circulation this year.
Look for the busy man, dashing all over Long Beach at Warped and say, “Hey Kevin! Thanks for putting this thing together!” Tickets for DC in 2027 go up this Friday!
TO FOLLOW
SID 260614 | JIMMY ALVAREZ | EDITOR
