For a generation of Southern California kids, summer meant the Warped Tour. Founded by Kevin Lyman in 1995, the traveling punk-and-alternative festival turned parking lots and fairgrounds into a sweltering all-day rite of passage, dozens of bands across a maze of stages, the schedule posted on an inflatable board you checked between sets, and a scene built on pop-punk, emo, hardcore, ska, and metalcore. Southern California was always its heartland; the tour launched careers and, for a lot of people, launched summers. After winding down its cross-country era at the end of the 2010s, Warped returned in 2026 for a 30th-anniversary revival, its comeback powered by Insomniac's event machinery, and SoCal got a marquee stop on the Long Beach waterfront: the same communal, sunburned chaos, back where the culture that made it runs deepest. Few festivals are woven as tightly into Southern California's musical coming-of-age, and for the punk and pop-punk faithful, Warped isn't nostalgia. It's home.