The Puerto Rican megastar joins a lineage of artists of color who’ve stood up for vulnerable groups on the coveted stage
Clockwise from top left: Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny (center), Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, Coco Jones, and Beyoncé.
Clockwise from top left: Kendrick Lamar, Bad Bunny (center), Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, Coco Jones, and Beyoncé.Matt Slocum/AP DOUG MILLS/NYT, Matt Slocum/Ap Kevin Winter/GETTY, Scott Strazzante/ap
Bad Bunny’s historic Super Bowl 2026 halftime show at Levi’s Stadium was mired in controversy before it even aired.
When the NFL announced the Puerto Rican singer as this year’s headliner, many people assumed it would be it as an act of resistance regarding Donald Trump’s second presidential term, during which Trump has gone further out of his way to demonize and persecute immigrants.
Under the president’s instruction, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained immigrants – most of whom have no violent criminal record – at record rates. This population includes many Spanish-speaking folks, a group that Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, proudly represents.
Bad Bunny is far from the first musician to use one of music’s most coveted stages to stand up for vulnerable groups of people, nor is he the first Latin artist to headline the Super Bowl halftime show. In 1979, Super Bowl XIII celebrated Caribbean culture with Ken Hamilton and various Caribbean artists, including the Dominican musical group Gramacks. Bad Bunny did, however, make history as the first artist to lead a Super Bowl halftime show that was primarily in Spanish.
This resulted in conservatives ardently rejecting the idea of this kind of performance. Turning Point USA was so disturbed by the news that the organization fired back with their own MAGA-friendly Super Bowl halftime show featuring Kid Rock, Brantley Gilbert, and Gabby Barrett.
However, that alternative didn’t deter over 100 million viewers from tuning into Bad Bunny’s cultural spectacle. For 13 minutes, the 31-year-old proudly honored his Puerto Rican heritage by showing as much visually as he did lyrically.
He started his performance in sugarcane fields, gleefully strolling past workers, before encountering taco and piraguas vendors, boxers duking it out, and women at a makeshift nail salon. Bad Bunny also displayed La Casita, a representation of a traditional Puerto Rican home. Waving the Puerto Rican flag alongside dancers holding flags representing countries in Central, North, and South America, as well as the Caribbean, the “Tití Me Preguntó” singer emphatically stated “Puerto Rico, seguimo’ aqui” which translates to, “Puerto Rico, we’re still here.”
Though Trump dismissed the performance as “absolutely terrible” on social media, it was clear from online reactions that Bad Bunny was successful in uplifting marginalized communities that are continuously targeted in a tumultuous political climate.
Bad Bunny joins several artists of color who, in recent years, have used the Super Bowl stage to either speak out against injustice or to shine a light on this country’s complex history.
One example of this is the incorporation of the “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” – also known as the Black national anthem – into the Super Bowl. A Black singer has performed the song at the ceremony every year since 2020, following the George Floyd protests. Despite the outrage the song continues to cause (Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammer recently said that its inclusion was part of a “woke agenda”), it remains part of the program. This year, Grammy-winning singer Coco Jones performed the song.
Last year, Kendrick Lamar followed suit and used his performance to not only further insult his rap adversary Drake, but to also highlight the racial oppression suffered by Black Americans. His performance, entitled “The Great American Game,” was narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson, who was dressed up as Uncle Sam, a national personification of the United States.
Throughout the set, Jackson labeled renditions of Lamar’s songs, such as “squabble up” and “tv off,” as “too loud, too reckless, and too ghetto.” He also encouraged the dancers–who wore the colors of the American flag–to “tighten up.” This commentary is all too familiar to Black folks, whose survival often depends on adherence to white supremacy and the societal expectations that stem from it.
During a 2025 interview on Paloma Faith’s “Mad Sad Bad” podcast, Jackson said Lamar’s show asked “what does Black America look like, and how to control that narrative of what it means to be Black in America, versus what the world’s perspective of that is.”
In 2020, Jennifer Lopez’s halftime show alongside Shakira–in which Bad Bunny was a surprise guest– served as a powerful statement impacting the Latinx community. After finishing the song “Dance Again,” the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. was suddenly covered in darkness before a light shone on Lopez’s daughter, Emme, and other children who were trapped in neon cages.
Lopez revealed in her 2022 Netflix documentary “Halftime” that the NFL initially tried to pull the cages from the performance in an attempt to avoid discussing Trump’s immigration policies. Ultimately, the show went on as planned.
“For me, this isn’t about politics,” Lopez said in the film. “This is about human rights.”
Perhaps the most controversial moment in Super Bowl halftime show history was Beyoncé’s performance of her song “Formation” in 2016. Much to the surprise of Queen Bey fans, she dropped her one-size fits all catalog and used the song to honor the unique beauty of her heritage as a Black woman from the South.
Paying homage to the 50th anniversary of the militant Black Panther Party, the “Cowboy Carter” artist–with the help of beret-clad dancers sporting glorious afros–basked in unapologetic Blackness while acknowledging the importance of the social justice movement.
Up until that point, the Super Bowl hadn’t seen anything like it.
Though Republican politicians like former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the star was making it acceptable to attack police, her bold statement merely expanded an already solidified fanbase. With lyrics like “I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros/I like my negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils,” it was clear that she was appreciating her roots.
Beyoncé’s performance also struck a nerve with those who wrongly equated being American with being white – not unlike how Bad Bunny’s performance irritated those who do not view Puerto Rico and its citizens as a part of the US.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show will go down as one of the most memorable–and divisive–in the history of the event. If this trend continues, which it will, we can only expect the brazenness and the backlash to grow.