When We Were Young Festival Announces Hiatus: Emo Nostalgia on Pause Until 2027

The pop-punk, emo, and metalcore festival When We Were Young has spent the past decade catering to former Warped Tour kids with disposable income. They won't be doing that next year.

The WWWY team announced today that they're taking 2026 off "to give this festival the care it deserves and to make sure what comes next feels just as special as what came before." With the promise of a return to Las Vegas in 2027, the message asserts, "This isn't goodbye — this is just a pause."

Here's the full message:

>To our When We Were Young family,
>
The songs, the memories, the moments — none of it exists without you. After an unforgettable run in Las Vegas, we’ve decided to take 2026 off to give this festival the care it deserves and to make sure what comes next feels just as special as what came before.
>
>When We Were Young Festival will return to Las Vegas in October 2027. Thank you for showing up with your whole hearts every year. This isn’t goodbye — it’s just a pause.
>
>We’ll see you in 2027.

A one-off When We Were Young technically took place in Santa Ana, CA back in 2017, but its reign over the Hot Topic demo properly kicked off in October 2022, when the fest relaunched at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds. The 2025 lineup was announced less than a month after the 2024 event wrapped up, so the lack of a 2026 installment comes as no surprise. No specific reason was given for When We Were Young's postponement, but some have speculated that the resurgence of the Warped Tour — which has stops in five North American cities this year — has something to do with it.

Notably, Best Friends Forever, the smaller-scale Vegas festival focused on more indie-leaning emo nostalgia, is also skipping 2026 because its venue, the Downtown Las Vegas Event Center, is being turned into a parking lot.

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