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Bad Bunny must be having the most surreal week of his life. “To be honest, I don’t know how I’m feeling,” he said in the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show press conference. “I wasn’t looking for the Album of the Year at the Grammys … I wasn’t looking [to perform] at the Super Bowl halftime show. I just was looking to connect with my roots, connect with my people more than ever.”
The artist, familiarly known as “Benito,” took home three Grammy Awards this past Sunday for his sixth solo studio record, Debí Tirar Más Fotos. They were for Best Global Musical Performance, Best Música Urbana Album, and most notably, Album of the Year. It was the first primarily Spanish-language project to win the award, and a win that confirms what his fans have all known for a while now: Bad Bunny is, in fact, the biggest star in the world.
Currently on his victory lap, the Puerto Rican artist is set to perform the halftime show at Super Bowl LX this Sunday. His selection shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, unless you’ve been living under a rock: He was last year’s most streamed artist on Spotify, his sold-out residency in San Juan generated hundreds of millions for the local economy, and he was recently crowned the greatest pop star of 2025 by Billboard.
Latinos have performed at the Super Bowl before — Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, Shakira, Taboo of Black Eyed Peas fame — and Bad Bunny has even appeared onstage, but this show feels especially important considering both his commitment to singing entirely in Spanish and the state of everything in America as of late. It’s an easy layup of a pick, but because conservatives can’t keep Benito’s name out of their mouths, MAGA right-wingers have spent the last few months slinging xenophobic insults and advocating for his deportation. (It’s worth noting here that Puerto Rico is a colonized territory of the United States, meaning all Puerto Ricans are, technically, American citizens, but that hasn’t stopped Turning Point USA from planning counterprogramming with … Kid Rock.)
There’s also a more nuanced dialogue to be had considering that, according to the government, ICE won’t show up on Sunday. Naturally, there’s skepticism. And considering Benito’s previous comments about not performing in America due to immigration officers potentially pulling up to his shows, a lot is riding on Sunday’s performance, on and off the field.
At its purest form, though, the Super Bowl halftime show is nearly 15 minutes of cultural ubiquity; a sandbox for the world’s most popular musicians to showcase their strengths. The Bad Bunny Bowl has potential to be one of the biggest — and most impactful — performances of all time, and with something so huge on the way, it’s only natural to formulate some predictions on what Benito is going to bring to Levi’s Stadium this weekend. Hopefully, it’s a conservative’s worst nightmare: There’s immigrants and gay stuff. Wouldn’t be the first time!
Debí Tirar Más Fotos is a political album. He’ll turn the Super Bowl into a political platform.
When Benito accepted the Grammy for Best Música Urbana Album this past weekend, he started his speech in English, saying: “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out,” to thunderous applause. This statement, even though it was one of the most clear and direct of that evening, is relatively toothless compared to the radical messaging in some of Bad Bunny’s most pointed songs. There’s the critique of American colonization in “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii,” the highlighting of gentrification woes in “TURiSTA,” and several references to Puerto Rican independence activists in “LA MuDANZA.” He also made fun of Trump’s xenophobia in the video for “NUEVAYoL,” and older tracks like “Afilando Los Cuchillos” call out corruption in the Puerto Rican government.
The jury is out on whether or not he’ll play these songs (odds are the setlist will have more perreo, like “EoO” or “Safaera”), but posters have been cropping up in major cities of the de facto mascot of Debí Tirar Más Fotos, the endangered sapo concho, bordered by the rallying cries “CHINGA LA MIGRA” and “FUCK ICE.” We don’t know (yet) who the posters belong to, but if it’s not Benito’s team, then the fact that such brash messaging is being tied to Bad Bunny’s iconography says a lot about what he represents. Odds are he’ll expand on his Grammy statements at some point during the halftime performance, even though NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has said the goal is to “unite” the country.
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The performance’s theme? Most likely “sobre PR, para PR.”
The cultural and emotional center of Bad Bunny’s music has always been his love and devotion to the Puerto Rican people. He’s advocated for the island his entire career; just look to his very first television appearance on The Tonight Show, in which he proclaims “more than 3,000 people died” from Hurricane Maria and “Trump is still in denial.” His 2025 residency at El Choli in San Juan was titled “No me quiero ir de aqui” — “I don’t want to leave here” — and his current world tour shines a spotlight on Puerto Rican culture around the globe. Plena music is given center stage, interstitial videos feature Boricua icon Jacobo Morales, and every show has a crash course in Nuyorican salsa. Since the halftime show comes in the middle of this tour, I’d bet on the halftime show having the same sensibilities. Anthems about the homeland like “El Apagón” or “P FKN R” could get the entire arena jumping.
Don’t expect the guests to be Drake or Kendall Jenner.
Bad Bunny’s first appearance in the Super Bowl was during the Jennifer Lopez–Shakira Latino Halftime Extravaganza back in 2020 (the NFL’s first foray into Latin culture and maybe the last pre-COVID cultural moment), when he was brought out to perform “Callaíta” and “I Like It” with Shakira. This time around, we can surely expect guests, but I wouldn’t bet on any modern English-language chart-toppers — unless Cardi B hops up from her box to join him onstage for “I Like It”?
During his residency in Puerto Rico, Benito brought what felt like every famous Latin musician to his onstage casita, from multilingual industry veterans like Marc Anthony to newer Boricua up-and-comers like Young Miko. The casita will almost certainly show up again, and for his halftime show, he’s likely to pull from a similar pool of artists. He could include frequent collaborators like Tainy, Jowell y Randy, Arcangel, or even J Balvin, who he recently squashed a long-standing beef with.
At the same time, though, the halftime show always welcomes a few curveballs. I think of the LMFAO cameo during Madonna’s halftime show, or Serena Williams crip-walking during Kendrick Lamar’s. There could be something ahead more in line with Bad Bunny’s history-making headline Coachella set, where he brought out Puerto Rican legend Jose Feliciano to perform “La Canción” and “Yonaguni.” Maybe it’s time for recent Rosalía impersonator Elvis Crespo to make an appearance?
He’ll get dressed up (literally).
In the month leading up to the Super Bowl, the dominating discourse from right-wing pundits shifted to something worse in their eyes than singing in Spanish: the idea of Bad Bunny wearing a dress during the performance. Because nothing is worse to Republicans than a man looking stylish.
This wouldn’t be totally out of pocket for Benito — real ones remember the Jacquemus dress, or the Burberry dress, or even the skirt he wore on The Tonight Show to protest the murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano — but it was provocative enough for conservatives to chime in. The rumor became so pervasive that production sources went to TMZ to clear the air. But even if he doesn’t don a ballgown, there’s still an opportunity for him to experiment with gender-bending fashion, courtesy of his frequent collaborators Schiaparelli or Burberry, the latter of which designed his 2022 Met Gala “boilersuit” that looked a whole lot like a dress.
And maybe even an ode to all things “NUEVAYoL”?
Anything is possible. Yes, the Super Bowl is in San Francisco, but hear me out real quick: For the opener, I could see the lights going down … a boombox sitting onstage … and then a hand pressing play on El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico’s “Un Verano en Nueva York.”
All of a sudden, as the song transitions to “NUEVAYoL,” New York iconography flies across the screen: the Statue of Liberty draped in a Puerto Rican flag … Mr. and Mrs. Met, holding hands … and then a pause — wait, is that salsa icon Willie Colón? With a hologram of Héctor Lavoe? And they’ve both locked arms with … newly elected mayor of Nueva York Zohran Mamdani?!? It’s the halftime show! Lady Gaga jumped down from the rim of the stadium! Anything can happen.
