Who needs the Super Bowl when you have the Benito Bowl?
More than a year after releasing his sixth studio album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Bad Bunny capped off one of the great years in contemporary pop culture by performing at the Super Bowl LX halftime show.
The matchup was a defensive struggle between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, and what the game lacked in excitement Bad Bunny more than made up for.
In a lot of ways, the performance captured why he became utterly transcendent in 2025. The way he merges culture, history, politics, and addictive music appears effortless. Leading up to the performance, there were weeks of manufactured controversy over the fact that he wouldn’t speak English during the performance, a point Benito himself commented on this week when he said English wasn’t important—knowing how to dance was. The show’s core was a cultural conversation: a warm welcome to Puerto Rico, an open-arms hug to Latin countries everywhere. Bad Bunny’s performance was a stunning follow-up to Kendrick Lamar’s, which was largely framed around his evisceration of Drake.
Here are our immediate takeaways from Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.
The show was Puerto Rican as hell
The power of Bad Bunny has always been his ability to pull listeners into his world, not the other way around. That shows up most clearly in his music, which pays homage to the many Puerto Rican genres that raised him while directly confronting the island’s political ills.
That same philosophy carried into his residency: if you wanted to see him perform in the States, you had to go to Puerto Rico and, in the process, support the island itself—an idea that Bad Bunny has said was influenced in part by ICE’s heavy handed presence on the mainland.
So it’s no surprise that even on the biggest stage, his show was unapologetically Puerto Rican. The performance functioned as a rich collage of PR references. Large portions were set in a sugar-cane field and backed by a salsa band. The pink-and-yellow La Casita house—featured throughout the residency—returned, with Cardi B, Karol G, and Pedro Pascal appearing inside. Puerto Rican boxer Xander Zayas shows up alongside Emiliano Vargas mid-show. Toñita, the legendary owner of a Puerto Rican social club in New York City, even handed him a drink.
It was a performance packed with Easter eggs and frantic energy, one that celebrated the joy of Puerto Rican culture. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
The guests were unexpected
People have been speculating for months about the guests Bad Bunny would bring out. In the lead-up to the show, betting sites featured a bunch of action, with names like Travis Scott and J Blavin popping up most frequently. Bad Bunny, however, remained tight-lipped at his press conference, offering no hints.
The guests who did appear shocked me. Considering that Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga have no songs together, her appearance was not on my 2026 bingo card. But it was a nice inclusive touch: she performed a salsa version of her Bruno Mars duet “Die with a Smile.” In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been surprising. She voiced her support for Benito in an interview with People, and given that the performance was in Spanish, Gaga’s English-language interlude made for a brilliant crossover moment.
The other musical guest, Ricky Martin, was a more likely—but still surprising—choice, considering all the reggaeton greats Bad Bunny could have brought out. Ricky was not only a pioneering pop figure but also an early supporter of Bad Bunny, providing ghost vocals on X 100PRE back in 2018.
Bad Bunny could have brought anyone on stage, and choosing two legacy acts who resonate with both American and global audiences was smart. —Antonio Johri
The Grammy moment was the most powerful moment of the performance
During the performance, a family watches Benito’s “ICE out” Grammys speech, when he won the Best Música Urbana Album award. Benito then appears and hands one of the family members—a young boy—the Grammy he just won, telling him in Spanish, “This is forever for you.”
The moment was profound and open to interpretation. Most directly, it was Bad Bunny inspiring the next generation, showing that Puerto Ricans—and Latinos more broadly—can dominate the world’s biggest stages, from the Grammys to the Super Bowl. It was a passing of the torch, placing legacy, possibility, and visibility into a child’s hands.
The gesture also stood out as one of the most overtly political moments of the performance. Early online confusion mistook the boy for Liam Ramos, the five-year-old detained by ICE whose case sparked nationwide outrage. Given the resemblance, the moment seems like a direct nod to the ICE incident. —Antonio Johri
The political messages were more inclusive than confrontational
“We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.”
This, of course, was part of Bad Bunny’s Best Música Urbana album acceptance speech. Given the weight of that moment, it felt inevitable that his NFL appearance would carry some political heat. At the same time… this is the NFL, and there was only so much the league was going to let Benito do.
The workaround, it seems, was to frame his message around inclusion, unity, and love rather than focusing on ideology and right-wing rhetoric. He closed the performance by saying “God Bless America,” while holding a football that read “Together, we are America.” Even more striking was a sign visible in the background: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love”—a message that might seem trite but earned an emotional and confrontational response from Donald Trump.
Again, this is the NFL, a massive corporate entity, so nothing here was ever going to be too confrontational. Still, it was refreshing to see Benito deliver his message in a way that felt true to who he is. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
This is up there with the best Super Bowl performances of the modern day era
Since Jay-Z and Roc Nation became involved with the Super Bowl halftime show, there has been a noticeable elevation—not only in the talent chosen, but in how these artists use the stage to tell a story.
Whether it was Dr. Dre framing his performance around his own mythology, Rihanna exploring motherhood, or Kendrick Lamar showcasing his dominance through the lens of the American project, these performances stand out as some of the best in Super Bowl history. When it’s all said and done, Bad Bunny might have topped them all.
Yes, narrative was also at the heart of Bad Bunny’s show, but there was a level of performance rigor and craft at play that set it apart. It wasn’t just the flood of details and references; it was the breakneck speed at which they arrived, and the effortlessness with which he performed, rarely letting the pace compromise the show.
His setlist was unusual but efficient: eight songs spanning his career—shout out “Yo Perreo Sola!”—yet not presented in a strictly linear way. While DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS clearly inspired some of the show’s creative direction, it wasn’t the driving force behind the setlist, with songs from the album being mostly sprinkled in. The performance ended with “DtMF” and it was almost understated; the only portion performed was the emotional, nostalgic hook. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo