Sublime is coming home to Long Beach.
The world-renowned band will join next month’s Vans Warped Tour lineup, marking a return to the city where they got their start.
The announcement was made Wednesday during Mayor Rex Richardson’s annual economic forum, Grow Long Beach, where he touted the city as a growing hub for music, entertainment and tourism.
“There is no band that is more qualified to represent the LBC,” Richardson said before handing the stage over to Jakob Nowell, the son of Sublime’s late frontman, Bradley Nowell, who has taken over as lead vocalist.
“This is so cool to get to be here, man,” Jakob Nowell said before performing an acoustic version of “What I Got” on a guitar that was owned by his dad.
During his remarks, Richardson also pledged to rename a yet-to-be-announced street Sublime Way in honor of the band.
Sublime’s return is “a powerful homecoming for hometown heroes, and a reminder that Long Beach doesn’t just celebrate music history—we continue to make it,” Richardson said.
In that vein, the mayor has also championed a new coastal amphitheater scheduled to open next year next to the Queen Mary. He said the push to position Long Beach as a music, entertainment and tourism destination is already starting to pay off, with hotel bookings for 2026 already outpacing this year’s.
“Next summer, we’ll have a packed concert schedule,” Richardson said. He expects the city to see hundreds of thousands of visitors over the next couple of years, all leading up to the 2028 Summer Games, when 2 million tickets are expected to be distributed for the 11 Olympic and seven Paralympic events scheduled to be hosted in Long Beach.
“I feel like we’re in the midst of a very exciting renaissance for our city,” said Jakob Nowell, who was raised in Long Beach by his grandparents.
Sublime also has plans to release a new single this summer and is working on its first studio album in decades.
The release would be the first from Sublime since 1996’s multi-platinum “Sublime,” which was released shortly after Bradley’s death.
“It’s the epilogue,” Jakob Nowell, 30, told Rolling Stone in March. “Something that explores my lifetime relationship with this amazing body of work from a figure that I really never even got to meet, a figure who inspired so many music listeners and musicians around the world.”
Nowell made his debut as the band’s frontman at Coachella last year.
He worked with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and producer John Feldmann to write songs for the project, according to Rolling Stone.
“This is going to be really special,” Barker told Rolling Stone. “Bradley comes through his son Jakob… Chills every day in the studio when he sings and plays guitar.”
The Vans Warped Tour includes dozens of other bands, including Bowling for Soup, Dropkick Murphys, Ice-T and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus at the 30th annual rock festival.
It will be the largest music festival in the city’s history, with 85,000 attendees per day, according to Richardson.
The Warped Tour will take place on July 26 and 27 along Long Beach’s waterfront.