Bad Bunny has had a hell of a week. It started with a significant win at the 2026 Grammys, where Benito took home the Album of the Year award for his great 2025 record, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. To be invited to perform at the Super Bowl, one of the biggest stages in America, was one thing; finally receiving peak institutional recognition for an album that deliberately centered on Puerto Rican culture and musical history was another.
But let’s be real: There was certainly an elephant at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday, and that was the fact that Bad Bunny was representing Latin heritage and culture on one of America’s biggest stages at a moment when the Trump administration has ramped up ICE raids and anti-immigrant rhetoric to unprecedented levels. Just days earlier at the Grammys, Benito made his position crystal clear when he declared “ICE out” during one of his acceptance speeches, a direct rebuke to the ongoing deportation operations targeting Latino communities across the country. While he promised the halftime show would be a “party,” his presence at the Super Bowl was never just about entertainment. It was inherently political, whether he said so explicitly or not.
Unlike the Grammys, though, there weren’t any explicit condemnations made, nor any remarks about ICE, Trump, or the horrors of systemic oppression. Aside from speaking en Español for the entirety of the performance, the show’s most explicit nod to the current crisis arrived as Bad Bunny introduced a young boy resembling Liam Ramos, the five-year-old Latino boy who was detained by ICE last month in the Minneapolis area. The performance depicted the boy in front of a television watching Bad Bunny’s acceptance speech for Album of the Year at the Grammys; Benito then gave the boy his own Grammy, and he smiled at the camera. It was a pointed moment that reflected Bad Bunny’s vision of “The American Dream,” where representation is essential, and the children of immigrants are empowered to realize their full potential
Bad Bunny’s halftime show opened with field workers harvesting crops as he made his way through tall tropical shrubs and a portrayal of daily life in Puerto Rico; singing “Tití Me Preguntó,” he passed men seated playing cards and a woman getting her nails done, he visited a piraugua vendor and picked out a ring from a local jeweler. From the very outset, it was clear that this set would be both personal and specific to his Puerto Rican upbringing, a celebration of Caribbean and Latin legacy that honored both everyday life and superstardom.
Being the first solo Latino and Spanish-speaking artist to headline the Super Bowl halftime show at this particular political moment in America is a big deal. But as Bad Bunny has proven throughout his career, he has a way of making the gravity of the moment, and the pressure that comes with it, feel weightless. Few stars possess such infectious confidence and hypnotic command; his opening number instantly transported me back to his whirlwind 2023 headlining set at Coachella, when he kicked things off with a raucous, similarly unforgettable rendition of “Tití Me Preguntó” that had the entire crowd under his thumb. The Super Bowl opener landed with that same pull, quickly giving way to a house-party sequence as Benito tore through buoyant performances of “Yo perreo sola” and “EoO.”
By the time he finished his third song, Bad Bunny had already delivered on his promise of bringing the party. And then Lady Gaga showed up. Donned in a light blue dress and against a backing band of singers, instrumentalists, and percussionists, Gaga ran through an uptempo, elated rendition of her Bruno Mars collab “Die with a Smile.” As she’s proven time and time again with her chameleonic performances and indifference to genre, Lady Gaga never takes the easy way out; she was just as magnetic as our host for the evening, who promptly followed her performance with a wedding sequence and a joyous interpretation of “BAILE INoLVIDABLE.”
Perhaps surprisingly, though, it was Bad Bunny’s performance of Un Verano Sin Ti cut “El Apagón” that was the most (literally) powerful of the evening. As he scaled an electrical pole with other workers dangling around him, he asserted his love for Puerto Rico, beginning and ending with explosions on the connecting power lines. It was a way of acknowledging the ongoing power crisis in Puerto Rico while also serving as Bad Bunny’s most commanding moment of the set. He stood tall, his voice booming, his presence undeniable. The momentum from the number had Bad Bunny soaring through to the finish, which was an exuberant, massive performance of hit single “DtMF.”
Making space for joy was about as explicit as Bad Bunny got. Anyone hoping for an “ICE out” reprise or a direct swipe at Trump would have to look deeper into the fine print. Still, it was cathartic to watch him move with such specificity and collective pride, physically corralling waves of dancers to suggest that there is power in numbers, that we are stronger together than we are fractured. He closed the show by declaring, “God Bless America,” then rolling through a sweeping list of countries across North, Central, and South America, with the United States named second to last. In that final gesture, he seemed to underline a simple idea: this land belongs to all of us, and in the broadest sense, everyone in the Western Hemisphere is American.
As Kendrick Lamar proved with his performance last year, the Super Bowl halftime show is a perfect opportunity to showcase the kind of collective joy that marginalized communities create for themselves as both celebration and defiance. Last week, Bad Bunny reminded us that love is “the only force stronger than hate.” His halftime show was living proof of it.
Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show Setlist:
Tití me preguntó
Yo perreo sola
EoO
Die With a Smile (with Lady Gaga)
BAILE INoLVIDABLE
NUEVAYoL
El apagón (with Ricky Martin)
DtMF
