Warped Tour Comes Home: 100-Plus Bands Descend on the Long Beach Waterfront

If you owned studded belts in the aughts, clear your weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, July 25–26, the Vans Warped Tour plants its flag on the Downtown Long Beach Shoreline Waterfront (386 E. Shoreline Dr.), running 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. both days with more than 100 bands across a lineup that reads like a scene reunion nobody thought they'd get.

The daily splits do the heavy lifting. Saturday is the day for the people who screamed themselves hoarse to emo and metalcore: Jimmy Eat World, All Time Low, Simple Plan, Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada, Dance Gavin Dance, The Story So Far, and Reel Big Fish. Sunday tilts toward early-2000s pop-punk and ska nostalgia with Thrice, Taking Back Sunday, The Used, Third Eye Blind, Papa Roach, Mayday Parade, Silverstein, Motion City Soundtrack, and Alexisonfire.

Here's the local angle that makes this more than a touring nostalgia machine parking by the harbor: Joyce Manor, the beloved Torrance emo-punk band, is on the bill — a South Bay act playing a South Bay–adjacent waterfront to a hometown-ish crowd. When a genre festival this size lands in your backyard and books one of your own, that's not a coincidence, that's a scene getting its flowers.

The choice of Long Beach is itself the story. Warped's modern revival has been picky about cities, and putting a flagship two-day edition on the Long Beach waterfront — rather than a generic inland lot — bets that this coastline still has the highest density of people who mean it when they sing along. Early signs say the bet's good: the tour has already announced a return here for July 24–25, 2027, before this year's edition even happens.

A few survival tips, because a waterfront festival in late July is a physical event. Sun and salt air are relentless; sunscreen and a refillable bottle are not optional. The Shoreline site is walkable from the Aquarium and downtown, so transit and rideshare beat circling for parking. And pace the pit — two days is a marathon, and nobody wants to blow it out during the openers and miss The Used.

Bring the friend you went to shows with in 2006. Some reunions you don't schedule; this one, for once, is on the calendar. Two days, a hundred bands, one very sunburned tribe.

Sources: Warped Tour Announce 2026 Long Beach Lineup — Loudwire; Warped Tour Long Beach 2026: Daily Lineup — Evvntly Press