Bad Bunny To Play 2026 Super Bowl LX Halftime Show: All The Details

Bad Bunny will headline the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show on February 8, 2026, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California — a landmark moment for the genre-bending Puerto Rican superstar’s ascent that also carries a potential political subtext after the star excluded the United States from his 2025–2026 tour amid concerns about ICE activity.

The NFL revealed Bad Bunny’s booking during halftime of Sunday Night Football’s telecast of the game between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, a move that kept the reveal within football’s live moment and underscored the halftime show’s ongoing role as a cultural appointment beyond the game itself. The production is a partnership between the NFL and Roc Nation, with sponsorship from Apple Music. All stakeholders shared hints across social media about a major impending Super Bowl Halftime Show announcement.

Who Is Bad Bunny?

31-year-old rapper, singer, producer, actor, and wrestler Bad Bunny (né Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is considered a key artist in helping Spanish-language rap music reach global mainstream success and has been dubbed the “King of Latin Trap” by publications such as GQ and The Washington Post. His accolades include three Grammy Awards and eleven Latin Grammy Awards and he is the first Latin artist to headline Coachella. Forbes first recognized Bad Bunny as part of its 30 Under 30 class in 2019 alongside the likes of Post Malone, Billie Eilish and Camila Cabello.

On January 5 of this year, Bad Bunny released Debí Tirar Más Fotos — an album that critics called his most personal work and that earned him his fourth No. 1 on the Billboard 200. All 17 songs from the record charted on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with the record blending music native to Puerto Rico (including plena, jíbaro, salsa, and bomba) with contemporary dance and reggaeton.

While Debí Tirar Más Foto (which is Spanish for “Should Have Taken More Photos”) only featured his fellow Puerto Rican artists including across genres, countries and generations with songs alongside Will Smith, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Daddy Yankee, Diplo, Drake, Nicki Minaj, J Balvin, The Weeknd, Karol G, Dua Lipa, Becky G, Cardi B, Rosalía, Travis Scott and many more.

Bad Bunny’s star also goes beyond music.

In 2011, the star began making appearances on WWE programming in 2021, making his debut in the ring at WrestleMania 37 that year. He was even once crowned a WWE 24/7 Champion and continued wrestling in events like the 2022 Royal Rumble and 2023 Backlash events.

He began his major motion-picture acting debut in 2021 in the Fast & Furious saga with F9, and starred in additional films like 2022’s Bullet Train, 2023’s Cassandro with this year including two movies with Caught Stealing and Happy Gilmore 2.

As an artist, Bad Bunny brings cultural capital by the handfuls and his visibility as the Super Bowl Halftime performer brings a sonic offering that could expose the island’s sounds, rhythms and culture to never-before-seen levels.

Plus, in a special 2023 issue of Forbes, Bad Bunny opened up about his budding business empire from which he had earned an estimated $88 million (pretax) from touring, streaming success and major brand deals with the likes of Adidas and Corona. Those figures earned him a spot on the World’s 10 Highest-Paid Entertainers list.

ForbesBad Bunny Gives An Exclusive Tour Of His Budding Sports, Fashion And Entertainment EmpireBy Maria Gracia Santillana Linares

Timing: Why Is Bad Bunny Headlining the Halftime Show in 2026?

Bad Bunny follows Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX performance, which set a new halftime benchmark — with roughly 133.5 million viewers, higher than the average game audience — and delivered nonstop cultural, political and social conversations for weeks afterwards.

That precedent not only raises commercial and creative stakes for a performance, but also makes it all the more likely for BB to mix spectacle with political and cultural commentary.

Politics, Safety and Artist Strategy

Beginning in November later this year, the Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour announced 57 shows playing across Latin and South America, Asia and Europe, but not in the United States. Before this, Bad Bunny held a 30-date Puerto Rican-exclusive concert residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot in San Juan this summer.

Bad Bunny’s decisions regarding touring and a Puerto Rico residency were shaped by more than logistics: he has publicly discussed concerns — including fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity near concerts — as part of where to play.

“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the U.S., and none of them were out of hate — I’ve performed there many times,” he told i-D Magazine “All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent. I’ve enjoyed connecting with Latinos who have been living in the U.S. But specifically, for a residency here in Puerto Rico, when we are an unincorporated territory of the U.S…people from the U.S. could come here to see the show. Latinos and Puerto Ricans of the United States could also travel here, or to any part of the world. But there was the issue of — like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”

The context matters for how he frames a Super Bowl appearance because the halftime stage is both entertainment and a potential megaphone for social commentary.

What This Means for the NFL, Apple Music and Pop Culture

For major players like the NFL and Apple Music, Bad Bunny is a strategic and smart booking that will bring younger viewers, ensure deep Latino engagement, and undoubtedly create buzz across streaming platforms. For Bad Bunny, the halftime show is a rare opportunity for him to perform in America, reconciling a massively mainstream spectacle with his unapologetically Puerto Rican artistic identity.

The moment also marks a major push for Latin music’s visibility on one of the planet’s largest stages following in the footsteps of fellow Latino performers like Gloria Estefan (who closed the show in 1922), Enrique Iglesias and Christina Aguilera (who were part of the performance in 2000), and Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020 (where Bad Bunny was a special guest performer).

What to Expect From Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl

With Roc Nation and high-profile producers and directors attached to recent halftime productions, expect a cinematic, tightly choreographed set that leans into Bad Bunny’s theatrical instincts. Given his genre fluidity — from reggaeton and Latin trap to house and Puerto Rican folkloric inflections — the set could be a compact tour of his catalog and cultural influences, and will likely feature surprise guests or cross-genre collaborators to broaden appeal.

Booking Bad Bunny for Super Bowl LX is both a recognition of his commercial dominance and a deliberate cultural statement during a politically tumultuous time for the Latin community and the territory of Puerto Rico. Expect a show that aims to be both celebratory and consequential — and one that will have audiences discussing long after Bad Bunny’s final beat drops.