Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show role breaks barriers and sparks debate

A week after his “ICE out” declaration dominated Grammy headlines, anticipation is building over whether Bad Bunny will turn the biggest performance of his career — the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show — into a political call to action. 

“One thing about Bad Bunny is that he is a master at the art of surprise,” Petra Rivera-Rideau, an associate professor of American studies at Wellesley College who specializes in Latin music and U.S.-Latinx pop cultures, told CBS News. 

But some believe Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, doesn’t need theatrics to send a message.

“I think a lot of people are expecting him to have a political message in there,” Mike Alfaro, the creator of Millennial Lotería who has gone viral for translating Bad Bunny lyrics into English ahead of the big game, added. “I think just him being there is the political message.”

Reactions poured in when it was announced that the Super Bowl’s halftime headliner would be the popular Puerto Rican artist who performs mainly in Spanish, with some hailing the historic choice and others criticizing it.

President Trump blasted the decision to give Bad Bunny and Green Day — who are set to open the Super Bowl LX pregame festivities — a global stage, calling the lineup a “terrible choice.”

“I’m anti-them,” Mr. Trump told The New York Post, adding that he won’t be attending Sunday’s game.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called Bad Bunny “one of the greatest artists in the world” and said he doesn’t expect the halftime show to spark major controversy.

“Listen, Bad Bunny is — and I think that was demonstrated last night — one of the great artists in the world, and that’s one of the reasons we chose him,” said Goodell, referring to Bad Bunny’s Grammys speech. “But the other reason is he understood the platform he was on, and that this platform is used to unite people, and to be able to bring people together with their creativity, with their talents, and to be able to use this moment to do that. And I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands that, and I think he’ll have a great performance.”

Bad Bunny’s political voice

Bad Bunny hasn’t shied away from decrying America’s politics. 

When he took his new album on tour, he chose a residency in Puerto Rico and skipped the U.S. mainland entirely for fear that his fans would be targeted by federal agents.

In 2018, during Bad Bunny’s first appearance on American mainstream television, he kicked off his rendition of “Estamos Bien” on Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” by reminding the mainland that Puerto Ricans were still coping from one of the deadliest disasters in U.S. history.

“After one year of the hurricane, there’s still people without electricity in their homes, more than 3,000 people died,” said Bad Bunny, adding, “and Trump is still in denial.”

Beyond pioneering on the Super Bowl stage in a different language, Bad Bunny has already made political history through his music and cultural advocacy.

Mobilizing Puerto Rico

“We talk about stuff like Hurricane Maria, the protests in 2019, his involvement in the Puerto Rican elections in 2024. But really the point of [my] book is to talk about how his music functions as an act of resistance in this bigger political and social context of colonialism in Puerto Rico,” explained Rivera-Rideau, whose book focuses on Boricua history over the past three decades. 

Rivera-Rideau said “Benito,” as Latinos lovingly call him, continues to channel messages of pride and calls for political accountability for Puerto Rico in his latest album.

“It is in many ways his most overtly political album,” Rivera-Rideau said. 

In “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii,” for example, Bad Bunny calls out gentrification in the island, an ongoing trend fueled by financial incentives that have catapulted property taxes.

“There’s so many things that make life here difficult and yet, at the same time, there’s so much pride and joy,” Rivera-Rideau said.

In his latest album, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” Bad Bunny draws from Bomba, an Afro-Puerto Rican music genre that is rooted in the island’s connection to enslaved Africans. Bomba dancers often join drummers to merge their rhythms into a musical dialogue. 

During the 2019 protests calling for Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s resignation, Bomba, and other Caribbean music genres, were as prominent as chants and signs. Puerto Ricans used art and music — bomba dances, slam poetry, queer balls and more — to gather people together and call for change. Bad Bunny joined the movement, taking time off his concert tour that summer to march in San Juan and collaborate on what became the protest anthem, “Afilando los Cuchillos,” or “Sharpening The Knives.”

In 2020, Bad Bunny used his appearance on “The Tonight Show” to raise awareness about the murder of a homeless transgender woman in Puerto Rico. He wore a T-shirt that read, “They killed Alexa, not a man in a skirt,” to shed light on the tragedy and advocate for justice.

The broader impact of Bad Bunny’s halftime show

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance — the first to be headlined by a predominantly Spanish‑language artist — will be a landmark moment for the Latino community.

“I think there’s so many layers to how meaningful this halftime show is, and it hasn’t even happened yet,” Rivera-Rideau said.

“To have a Spanish language artist headlining this stage, which is although not a national holiday, kind of functions like one in the context where Spanish speakers, including Puerto Ricans, are getting racially profiled, are being harassed, to have someone like that on the stage is important.”

Spanish is the most common non-English language in the U.S., with about 13% of the population speaking it at home.

“There are more people that speak Spanish here in the United States than in my home country of Guatemala,” Alfaro said. “I think it’s important to understand that music is a universal language, even if you don’t quite understand what they’re saying.” 

For some fans, Bad Bunny is the main draw of this year’s Super Bowl.

“It’s about time to recognize our culture, our passion, our people,” Miriam Velez, co-owner of the Puerto Rican-themed social club Pe Erre Domino in Chicago, told CBS News Chicago.

“To not only have an impact in the United States, but a global impact is amazing,” Puerto Rican DJ Emmanuel Ríos Colón added.

“I think it doesn’t matter that it’s Bad Bunny, but that any Latino that goes and represents us in the Super Bowl, we’re good,” Yazmin Auli, owner of the Philadelphia bakery El Coquí, told CBS News Philadelphia. “It doesn’t matter who it is, but since it is Bad Bunny, that’s even better.”

The excitement over Bad Bunny’s halftime show is also sparking interest in more than just Latin music — it’s inspiring people to learn Spanish.

Duolingo, the language learning tool, reported that almost 49 million people worldwide are learning Spanish on the app. When the NFL announced the Super Bowl line-up, they shared a “Bad Bunny 101” crash course to get more Spanish learners on board. Duolingo told CBS News that 60% of those learners are still active today and points to the data as proof that people are motivated to be in the know.