Grab that taco, get yo ass off Hollywood Boulevard and grab some sun screen because Warped Tour is heading back to Long Beach, and we’ve put together a list of some of the best acts you can’t afford to miss this year…

Words & photo by Felix Bartlett  | July 5, 2026

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Right, we need to get a bit sentimental for a second before we crack on with the good stuff.

Growing up, there was always that weekly sprint down to WHSmiths to grab the latest copy of Kerrang, and without fail, straight to the Warped Tour coverage. Pages and pages of pure carnage. Bands crowd surfing off buses, kids covered head to toe in dirt and sweat, that unmistakable feeling that something genuinely wild was happening on the other side of the world while we were all stuck reading about it from bedrooms across the UK, absolutely buzzing off the fumes of it all. It was legendary. It was special. And honestly, it felt like a world most of us could only ever dream about actually being part of.

Fast forward to 2026 and, well, here we are. Bags packed, flights booked, and Amped is officially heading across the pond to hit up Warped Tour Long Beach in person. We genuinely cannot believe we get to type that sentence. So in celebration of the actual, real, happening return of one of the most important festivals this scene has ever seen, here’s a nosy dive into the bands you cannot, under any circumstances, miss, and why. We did our homework on this lot too, so buckle up.

Alexisonfire

After tearing through Wembley Arena and headlining Outbreak Festival, Alexisonfire are on an absolute rampage right now and showing zero signs of slowing down. They played one of the hottest days of the year on UK soil and somehow still managed to bring the heat themselves, so it only feels right they drag that same chaos across the Atlantic to Long Beach.

Big Ass Truck

Yes, that is genuinely the name, and yes, it’s every bit as unhinged as it sounds. Officially it’s Big Ass Truck I.E., a five-piece out of California’s Inland Empire who’ve gone from a demo and a couple of singles to a Nuclear Blast Records signing in under a year, sharing stages with the likes of Terror, Comeback Kid and Stick To Your Guns along the way. This is beatdown hardcore at its most gleefully over the top, huge, chugging riffs built for two-stepping straight through a barrier, but with a sense of humour running underneath it that stops it ever feeling one-note.

Boundaries

Timing does not get much better than this. Boundaries have just signed to Sumerian Records and are dropping their fourth album, Yearning: The Unbeautiful After, mere days before they hit the Long Beach stage, recorded with producer Drew Fulk (the same guy behind recent Knocked Loose and Fit For A King records) and stacked with guest spots. That means you’re catching this lot at the exact moment they’re stepping up a weight class, with a brand new, career-heaviest record still ringing in their ears.

Citizen

Citizen have spent over a decade proving emotional weight and huge riffs aren’t mutually exclusive, and their reach across the scene says it all, Mat Kerekes even turned up on Motion City Soundtrack’s comeback record earlier this year delivering a guest vocal that had Pierre himself singing his praises. Kerekes has one of those voices that sounds just as devastating in a packed field as it does through headphones at 2am, and their catalogue is deep enough that every set basically doubles as a greatest hits run.

DRAIN

Drain do not do a normal set. They’ve been known to build themselves an actual beach stage complete with a shark mascot moshing through the crowd, and frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro has branded the whole thing “posi-vibe” hardcore, essentially a surf lesson wrapped inside a thrash pit. It’s been described as the weirdest, wildest fun in the sun you’ll ever get at a hardcore show, and honestly, given they’re literally from Sacramento, expect them to feel very at home in the Long Beach sunshine. Do not, under any circumstances, be caught looking at your phone when they hit the stage.

Dying Wish

Portland’s Dying Wish have spent the last couple of years climbing the hardcore ladder at a genuinely terrifying speed. Their second album, Symptoms of Survival, was a brutal, melodic, emotionally devastating record, and vocalist Emma Boster delivers some of the most punishing vocals you’ll hear all weekend.

Fox Lake

One of the newer names on this bill, and one you’ll want bragging rights for catching early. Fox Lake have spent recent months out on the road opening for Upon A Burning Body and Norma Jean, which tells you everything about the company they’re already keeping, and a Warped Tour slot is exactly the kind of platform that turns a rising band into a scene staple overnight.

From First To Last

Skrillex might have been the biggest thing to hit high school hallways since My Chemical Romance, but real ones know we had him first, we’ve been saying it for years and we’re saying it again. Sonny Moore’s earlier life as the frontman of From First To Last gets buried under the DJ headlines far too often, and honestly it’s a crime, because the band’s chaotic post-hardcore energy still absolutely slaps live.

Guilt Trip

Guilt Trip on Long Beach. Need we say more? If you’re new to the Guilt Trip party then this is British heavyweight hardcore at its absolute filthiest. Guilt Trip have been a force on the European hardcore circuit for years now, and landing a Warped Tour slot feels like a moment where they finally get put in front of a much wider crowd. The pit at this one is going to be a battleground, so if you’re going in

Hawthorne Heights

For an entire generation, Hawthorne Heights weren’t just a band, they were a diary entry set to music. We caught their Slam Dunk after-show at The Dome in London, a barrier-less, air-con-less sweatbox where JT Woodruff joked he’d happily trade every classic British band going for a working AC unit, and the band leaned hard into the 20th anniversary of The Silence In Black And White, tearing through deep cuts alongside the singalongs. There was no real encore either, the band just refused to leave the stage and kept firing off hit after hit while crowd surfers climbed up and tumbled straight back into the pit like no time had passed at all. Ohio Is For Lovers is one of the most universally recognised emo anthems there is, the kind of song that closes a room out in tears, and if Long Beach gets anywhere near that kind of chaos, you do not want to be elsewhere.

Holy Wars

Holy Wars are the sort of band that gets described as what would happen if Nine Inch Nails and Evanescence had an unhinged night out, all pulsing industrial rhythms and soaring, theatrical choruses. Fronted by Kat Leon, they’ve been sharing stages with the likes of Evanescence and Poppy and are only getting bigger from here.

Lakeview

Now this one is genuinely one of the weirder, more brilliant bookings on this bill. Lakeview are a Nashville duo who’ve built their whole thing on smashing metalcore breakdowns into proper, storytelling country music, tattoos, twang and two-stepping all in one package. Think less “acoustic guitar by a campfire” and more “arena rock with a Southern drawl”, they’ve already been out supporting the likes of Nickelback, Breaking Benjamin and Staind, which tells you exactly how heavy this gets live.

Peelingflesh

If the name didn’t already give it away, Peelingflesh are not here to be gentle with you. The Oklahoma slam death crew have carved out their own lane by fusing brutal, chest-collapsing slam with hip-hop and Blaxploitation film samples, a sound they’ve dubbed “Slamming Gangster Groove”, and they’ve spent the last couple of years out on the road with the likes of Whitechapel and Revocation.

Scary Kids Scaring Kids

Few reunions in this scene have carried as much weight as Scary Kids Scaring Kids getting back together, and seeing them on a Warped Tour bill again feels like something close to poetic justice. Twisted Enough is going to sound absolutely massive in that Long Beach sun, and the nostalgia hit alone is worth the ticket price.

I Set My Friends On Fire

Absurd, unhinged and completely committed to the bit, I Set My Friends On Fire have been calling their own genre “evil funk” since they were literal high schoolers uploading a joke cover of “Crank That” to Myspace, a cover that went so viral Myspace repeatedly took their page down thinking it was fake traffic. That is the energy you’re signing up for.

The Story So Far

Few bands do heartfelt pop-punk quite like The Story So Far, and few crowds sing back quite as loud as the ones they pull in, something we saw first hand when they tore through the Roundhouse in London off the back of their latest record, I Want To Disappear. Empty Space is going to be an all-out singalong, so save your voice for this one, or don’t, we won’t judge, that’s what Warped Tour is for.

Upon A Burning Body

The San Antonio groove metalcore mainstays are arriving in genuinely rude health. Their latest album, Blood Of The Bull, just got a deluxe reissue with two brand new tracks, their first fully independent release, and they’ve spent the run up to Warped out on a co-headline tour with Norma Jean with Fox Lake in support (small world, keep an eye out for them earlier on this very bill). Heavy, relentless and made for a mosh pit that’s about to get very, very messy.

Xcomm

Save some energy for this lot, because Xcomm might just be the most exciting story on the entire bill. They’re a hardcore band out of Venice Beach with an average age that will make you feel very old indeed, drummer Revel Ian is fourteen, and yes, he’s Scott Ian of Anthrax’s son, so the kid genuinely grew up around this stuff. Their debut album, Time To Burn, was produced by Ross Robinson, the legend behind some of the most important heavy records ever made, and the band themselves talk about refusing to sit still inside one genre, hardcore crashing into electronics, melody sneaking in and vanishing again before you can process it.