Warped Tour is coming back in 2025 after sexual misconduct allegations were made. Women who played and attended the festival are speaking out.

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. Shifting from its traditional format as a traveling “punk rock summer camp,” Warped Tour 2025 will operate as a pop-up festival, taking place over two days each in just three cities. It begins in Washington, DC (June 14-15), continues to Long Beach, California (July 26-27) and then ends in Orlando (November 15-16). If the three-city festival is a success, Lyman said he would consider adding more stops to the tour in the coming years.

Before the festival's hiatus, Lyman's Warped Tour was under scrutiny as members of various bands were accused of sexual assault and misconduct, including against minors, at the shows.

Warped Tour has successfully launched the careers of pop-punk, pop-rock and alternative-rock greats such as Blink-182, New Found Glory, Paramore, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and has a rich tradition of up-and-coming artists Emerging bands use the platform to share their music and connect with fans across the continent. Genre outliers like the Black Eyed Peas and the 23-year-old, pre-famous Katy Perry have also taken the festival stage.

For many fans, an added benefit of Warped Tour was the ability to closely interact with their favorite artists. There was a real chance that if they waited long enough they could take some photos and chat with the lead singers at the merch stand. Hanging out privately with the band after the festival ended wasn't out of the question either – although some of those interactions have fueled allegations of misconduct.

“Warped Tour is like everywhere else – there are scary people and good people too. And there are a lot of people who just need help doing the right thing more often,” Kira-Lynn Ferderber, founder of Safer Scenes, a bystander intervention workshop offered at Warped Tour in 2017, told Yahoo Entertainment. The organization trained participants on how to safely stop any form of harassment.

In 2015, Lyman told author and musician Paul Adler that while Warped Tour “does not tolerate artists who do injustice,” it would “deal with them when there is evidence of it.” In a 2017 interview with Billboard, he reiterated this stance, attributing sexual misconduct to being “part of the culture.” In the wake of these allegations, Lyman partnered with the now-defunct nonprofit A Voice for the Innocent to teach the bands on Warped Tour how to “behave” on the road and to provide a space for those who did so to offer those affected by sexual violence to share their stories.

On October 18, Lyman came under fire again. The official X account for Warped Tour has become engaged to Falling in Reverse frontman Ronnie Radke, who has previously been accused of sexual assault.

Lyman and a representative for Vans Warped Tour did not immediately respond to Yahoo Entertainment's request for comment.

Ahead of the Warped Tour in 2017, Ferderber connected with Shawna Potter, lead singer of the hardcore punk band War on Women, after learning that she wanted to highlight feminist resources on tour. Ferderber has partnered with War on Women to not only educate participants, but also support survivors of sexual violence at every tour date.

“I heard many stories of sexual violence on the tour dates, which is unfortunately common at live events of all genres,” Ferderber said. “What's particularly unfortunate about Warped Tour and other alternative venues is that the sexist brothers have convinced themselves and their fans that they are somehow punk and edgy by hating women. Actually it’s so mainstream and boring, but it’s sold as rebellion.”

Mariel Loveland was the frontwoman of the pop-rock band Candy Hearts from 2009 to 2017. They played on 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 certain culture – not just on Warped but on all these pop-punk tours – of keeping your mouth shut and not making a big deal about anything. Be kind, be grateful, be happy, even if your tour partner decides to sexually harass you, call you a slut, or grab your butt. Even if men insult you or treat you differently than your male tour colleagues.”

For Loveland, participating in Warped Tour was “a dream come true.” She believes that the problem of the lack of protection for female visitors and artists is not just a Warped Tour problem. It’s an “alternative music” problem.

“When I was in Warped, I watched bands quite openly Talk 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 around women makes your partner uncomfortable, don’t you think that’s a big problem? That was normal.”

Theo Kogan performed on Warped Tour in 1999 and 2000 with her punk rock band Lunachicks. Although she felt respected by all the bands she interacted with, Kogan told Yahoo that she remembers both years as being “very high in testosterone” and “predominantly male.”

“The way some of the male/masculine bands/artists at the time treated their young female/female fans was extremely unsavory,” she said. According to Kogan, these bands' demands included showing their breasts and throwing their bras on stage. “It was pretty much accepted by those in charge there and no one had any desire to stop it.”

Kogan hopes festivals like Warped Tour encourage both bands and male attendees to be respectful.

“I'm tired of how often women are told to protect themselves, to be careful and to dress one way or another to avoid harassment,” she said. “Boys and men must be taught and forced to be respectful towards women/femmes. They need to know that it’s not OK to grab people’s bodies in the pit and while stage diving and crowd surfing.”

Ferderber has not yet been invited back to Warped Tour, but believes live shows, including Warped Tour, should continue to offer audience intervention workshops.

“I'm sure there are young women of the next generation in all the cities Warped visits next summer, and I hope they feel safe in their scenes and can be part of creating inclusive cultures at shows,” she said. “We really needed it in 2017 and we will need it again in 2025, I know that for sure.”

To create a safer space, Loveland encourages male bandmates to do their part.

“Men in bands have to lead the way. They can’t stand around twiddling their thumbs and keeping their mouths shut 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 won't tolerate this kind of harmful behavior.' I made this decision for myself years ago and I urge my colleagues to do the same.”

Updated October 24, 2024 at 12pm ET: (The article has been updated to clarify a quote from Mariel Loveland.)