The Vans Warped Tour first hit the road in 1995, hauling punk bands, skate ramps and a travelling village of merch tents across North America every summer. The full cross-country tour called time in 2018, followed by three 25th-anniversary dates in 2019. After six years away, it returned in 2025 as a run of two-day destination festivals. Long Beach is now back for round two.
In a historically male-heavy bill, women are still underrepresented at Warped – but where they feature, you’ll find acts turning what could be a straight nostalgia fest into something fresh.
Here are three female acts we saw and loved at Warped Tour Long Beach in 2026.
Winona Fighter
It’s early on Saturday morning but Winona Fighter’s Coco Kinnon isn’t easing folks in: “I wanna see you motherfuckers run. Fucking run bitch!” she yells, midway through set opener ‘RU FAMOUS’. Request granted: the pit opens up and the first crowd surfers start to fly through the air as ‘Swear To God That I’m (FINE)’ gets underway.
The Nashville punk-rock trio are known for insisting on safe spaces at their shows and today is no different. After ‘You Look Like a Drunk Phoebe Bridgers’, Kinnon pauses for some important festival admin. “Do not touch anyone who doesn’t want to be fucking touched,” she instructs. This is a very different Warped Tour from the days when boobies and buttholes sent sniggers across a crowd. And thank God.
The band’s cover of Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’ is rocket fuel for anyone trying to conserve energy in the scorching California sun.
After a tight 30-minute set, Winona Fighter have hooks to spare, though, and Kinnon looks delighted to be causing trouble before lunch. Anyone arriving early for old-school Warped gets a very current reason to stick around.
Alemeda
The Ethiopian-American punk pop star is one of the acts we’re most excited to see this weekend and Sunday seriously picks up when her set begins. She’s been touring with another Forty-Five favourite, Rachel Chinouriri, had a huge Doechii-featuring hit with ‘Beat A B!tch Up’ and is making her Warped debut this weekend. “This is one of my dream festivals,” she reveals early on. And this is exactly the type of act that Warped should be booking – someone who represents the new guard of punk icons, meshing genres together to create something truly unique. Her energy is infectious – as is the don’t-fuck-with-me attitude. “When I want to move on from something, I have to pretend it died,” Alemeda sasses before track ‘I Dug Your Grave’. ‘I’m Over It’ is dedicated to someone she lost through drug addiction and provides a poignant moment in an otherwise full-throttle set. Finishing with a reinterpreted rockier version of ‘I Bleached My Eyebrows’, Alemeda proved she knows the weight of the Warped Tour’s past – but she’s here to herald its future.
Save Ferris
Monique Powell is already one of the weekend’s main characters before Save Ferris play a note. On Saturday, she joins old pals Reel Big Fish for ‘She Has a Girlfriend Now’, back shoulder-to-shoulder with Aaron Barrett roughly 25 years after they last performed it together. By Sunday night, Powell is ready to lead Save Ferris into battle on the Rex stage – with a full horn section lined up behind her.
There’s something pleasing about this being the alternative to Papa Roach’s headline set – gimme a crowd of skanking ska kids over nu-metal dads any day of the week – and thirty years on from the release of their game-changing debut record ‘It Means Everything’, Save Ferris’ third-wave ska is back and sounding better than ever.
Opening with the first track from that debut – ‘The World Is New’ – the band sound bright and energised. It only takes a few moments before the crowd’s knees are up, with the song taking on a brilliantly new meaning in 2026.
Their Dexy’s cover of ‘Come On Eileen’ is as much of a crowd-pleaser as it was back in the day – and a guaranteed winner for passers-by drawn in by the tooting horns.
‘Goodbye’ is slinky and cool. And newer tracks, like ‘Lights Out In The Reptile House’ seamlessly slot in with the classics. I’ve always been a sucker for ska music and Powell still has the charm and chops to lead the genre into its next wave.
