The Super Bowl’s halftime stage has always been a marketing platform and a pop-culture scoreboard. In 2026, it is also being treated as a referendum on language, identity and political belonging—well before a single snap is played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, will become the first artist to deliver a Super Bowl halftime show entirely in Spanish, a milestone that supporters say could pull in millions of viewers who might otherwise ignore a New England Patriots–Seattle Seahawks matchup. His selection, announced in September, has also drawn condemnation in right-wing media circles, with opponents citing his criticism of President Trump and his administration’s immigration policies. The backlash has become so heated that a conservative organisation has announced an alternative halftime event featuring Kid Rock, a Trump ally.
By Thursday, the political temperature around the performance was visible even at the press logistics. Security for Bad Bunny’s media event was unusually tight: journalists passed through scanners and then had their bags searched again while waiting. Inside, the artist appeared unbothered, lounging across a sofa in a long faux-fur coat as Apple Music hosts Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden guided a conversation marked more by fanfare than confrontation.
Bad Bunny, however, acknowledged that the pressure is real. He told reporters he had been losing sleep, describing waking up at 4 a.m. thinking about the Super Bowl. Still, he suggested he wants his 13-minute set to land as celebration rather than provocation—“a huge party,” he said—framing it as a moment of unity, healing and dance.
The week that made it bigger than music
Bad Bunny will take the halftime stage one week after winning album of the year at the 2026 Grammy Awards for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” the first time an all–Spanish-language album has won the top prize. He said he had not been chasing trophies or the Super Bowl, explaining that the album was about reconnecting with his roots, identity, history and culture—work that, almost accidentally, expanded into the NFL’s biggest showcase.
He is preparing while still in the middle of an extensive world tour, a scheduling squeeze he joked had even disrupted his dominoes games. “I’m not even playing that much dominoes,” he said, adding that he had scored a “zero” in his last three games and that he needed to talk to his therapist.
He refused to confirm whether surprise guests will appear on Sunday, laughing off the question. But he did say the show will be watched closely by his family, friends, “the Latino community,” and fans worldwide. When a student journalist asked him to name an early supporter, he answered simply: his mother, saying she believed in him first as a person.
He also used the moment to deliver a broader message: people should be proud of who they are and where they come from, but not let that pride become a ceiling.
The debate around the show is intensifying in part because the halftime performance is one of the world’s most-watched music events, typically drawing more than 100 million viewers in the United States alone. It is not unusual for the halftime show to out-rate the game itself. Last year, Kendrick Lamar set an audience record with 133.5 million viewers tuning in. Even less-acclaimed bookings—such as Maroon 5 in 2019—have still hovered near 100 million.
The stakes are high enough that many headliners perform for no fee, taking only a “union scale” payment of about $1,000 (£738) per day, while the NFL covers the production bill. Reuters has previously estimated the cost of staging the halftime show at roughly $1 million per minute, citing Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s 13-minute 2020 performance as an example, along with travel and accommodation expenses.
Bad Bunny has been on this stage before: he appeared during Super Bowl LIV’s halftime show in 2020 alongside Lopez and Shakira. This year’s solo spotlight, though, has been framed as unprecedented—both for its language and for what it signals about who the Super Bowl is for.
From Boston watch parties to Washington talking points
The cultural resonance is being felt far from California. In Massachusetts—home to the fifth-largest Puerto Rican population in the United States and hundreds of thousands of other Latinos—restaurants, bars and clubs are treating the halftime show as its own event.
In Worcester, Puerto Rican restaurateur Nivia Piña-Medina has organised a Benito-themed watch party at her restaurant, Vejigantes. She is also setting up a television at the restaurant’s South End location to broadcast the show, part of a wider pattern of venues promoting the halftime performance alongside the game. Event flyers and storefronts have begun pairing Puerto Rican flags with Patriots branding.
For Boston-based DJ Francisco Recillas—known professionally as DJ Sisko—the excitement is also commercial reality. He said Bad Bunny requests have become so constant in clubs that the phenomenon is now a meme. On Sunday alone, he has back-to-back gigs scheduled at Grace by Nia, Scorpion and Memoire, reflecting how bilingual DJs have become busier in recent years.
Polling suggests the enthusiasm is especially strong among younger viewers. An Emerson College survey of 1,000 people found that most respondents under 30 are excited to see Bad Bunny perform. The poll showed 52% of Black respondents and 50% of Hispanic respondents expressing excitement, compared with 31% of white respondents.
Supporters argue the artist’s trajectory makes the moment even more symbolic. Bad Bunny rose from bagging groceries to global stardom while largely avoiding an English-language crossover. His music routinely blends reggaeton with salsa, bomba and other Latin genres. And he has built a following not only through hits but through open political stances—criticising attacks on LGBTQ+ people, the displacement of Puerto Ricans from the island, and deportation efforts targeting Latinos under the Trump administration.
That mix of music and politics is central for artists and organisers in Boston. Elsa Mosquera, founder of Ágora Cultural Architects and an organiser of the third annual BoriCorridor Tour music series, said it is impossible to separate culture from politics in the current climate. She described even speaking Spanish publicly in downtown Boston as inherently political: standing in the city centre with a microphone and speaking Spanish, she said, is an act that carries meaning beyond entertainment.
The halftime show has also sparked hopes of an economic bump for Latino-owned businesses trying to capitalise on the “Benito” buzz. Bad Bunny’s residency in Puerto Rico previously generated an estimated economic impact ranging from $200 million to $733 million. Piña-Medina cautioned that Massachusetts businesses are unlikely to see anything comparable—not because of limited interest, but because layoffs, rising costs and fears of being detained by immigration agents are weighing on communities and local commerce.
Still, she said, the moment feels personal and historic. “Personally, it’s an honor,” she said.
How to watch — and who else is on the bill
The Super Bowl kicks off at 23:30 UK time (18:30 in San Francisco), and halftime timing depends on the flow of the game, meaning Bad Bunny could begin any time between 01:00 and 01:30 UK time. In the United States, NBC will broadcast the game and Peacock will stream it. In the UK, coverage begins at 22:30 on Channel 5, Sky Sports and Now TV. The NFL typically uploads the full halftime show to YouTube soon after broadcast, and Apple Music subscribers can replay it in spatial audio.
The pregame lineup includes Charlie Puth performing the U.S. national anthem in his Super Bowl debut; Brandi Carlile singing “America the Beautiful”; and Coco Jones performing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” sometimes called the Black national anthem. The song began appearing in the pregame show in 2021 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and was originally written as a poem in 1899.
Deaf performers will also feature prominently: Fred Beam will sign the national anthem and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in American Sign Language, while Julian Ortiz will sign “America the Beautiful.”
Before kickoff, Green Day will perform to mark the Super Bowl’s 60th anniversary. The Bay Area-rooted band plans to “Get loud!” according to lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong.
Even the White House has been pulled into the cultural argument. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday that President Trump would prefer Kid Rock over Bad Bunny, as conservatives continue to frame the halftime decision as divisive. Trump himself said in January that he would not attend the Super Bowl, citing both Bad Bunny and Green Day and calling them a “terrible choice” that, in his words, “sows hatred.”
Bad Bunny has largely sidestepped those political crosscurrents in public this week. But the spectacle surrounding his 13 minutes—language, identity, security checks and all—has already turned the halftime show into a story bigger than football.
