Benito Bowl came and went — and it was an absolute joy to witness.
Bad Bunny emerged from the middle of Levi’s Stadium, where the football field had been transformed into the Puerto Rican countryside. Nestled among sugarcane fields and plantain trees reminiscent of his native island, the rapper, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, kicked things off with the tracks “Tití Me Preguntó” and “Yo Perreo Sola,” as he glided through his crowd of dancers.
He made his way onto “La Casita” — the pink, concrete-brick house stage, which fans will recognize from his No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí residency in Puerto Rico, and where a crowd of celebrities, including Jessica Alba, Cardi B, Karol G, Pedro Pascal and Alix Earle, were spotted dancing. Soon after, the rapper, who’s no stranger to stunt work, quite literally crashed through La Casita’s roof and into a furnished home, before walking out the front door and hopping on top of a white truck just in time to launch into his track “EoO.” At one point, Bad Bunny walks over to a little boy sitting in front of a TV set and hands him a Grammy Award. The heartfelt moment perhaps serves as a nod to the rapper’s childhood dreams coming true.
Because it is Benito we’re talking about, the halftime show was underscored by simple yet sophisticated ensembles that were put together by his frequent collaborators Storm Pablo and Marvin Douglas Linares. The rapper wore a head-to-toe cream-colored Zara look: a collared shirt, a cropped sweater, chinos, sneakers and very football-player-coded gloves. Later, he changed into a double-breasted suit and tie — in cream, of course.
As is traditional for Super Bowl halftime show headliners, the Puerto Rican rapper’s performance wasn’t without a few surprise guests. As the strings of the song “Monaco” played, Lady Gaga emerged on stage to sing a rendition of “Die With a Smile,” her collaborative track with Bruno Mars, while an actual wedding took place. Gaga, accompanied by a salsa band, wore a ruched, baby-blue flamenco dress with a flor de maga, Puerto Rico’s national flower, pinned to her bodice. The rapper then launched into his 2025 hits, “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and “NUEVAYoL,” before his next guest, Ricky Martin, appeared.
Sitting beneath a plantain tree, mirroring Bad Bunny’s album cover for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, the Latin superstar performed “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii,” about the displacement of locals in Puerto Rico.
Behind Martin, dancers dressed as jibaros in pavas, Puerto Rican farmers in traditional straw hats, climbed atop exploded power poles, which symbolized the island’s failing power grid. Bad Bunny stood before the power poles waving a Puerto Rico flag in the air as he performed his track, “El Apagón,” protesting against the recurring power outages.
When it came time to sing “CAFé CON RON,” Bad Bunny made sure to drive home the halftime show’s overarching sentiment of unity. While holding a football that read, “Together we are America,” the rapper proudly exclaimed, “God Bless America,” and named countries in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Behind him, a large screen displaying the phrase “The only thing more powerful than hate is love” could be seen, a direct reference to his recent speech at the 2026 Grammy Awards.
He concluded the halftime show with arguably his most popular track yet, “DtMF,” a somber ballad that laments the loss of time spent with loved ones. These final moments in particular were undeniably joyous, as Bad Bunny, along with his dancers and musicians, who helped bring this love letter to Puerto Rico to life, reveled in a job well done.
That Bad Bunny’s performance would be full of nods to Puerto Rico and subtle commentary on the U.S.’s anti-immigration rhetoric was practically a given: The 31-year-old superstar has always made his profound love for Puerto Rico common knowledge — and the same goes for his support of immigrant rights.
These very sentiments are also woven through the fabric of his latest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, which won Album of the Year at this year’s Grammys.
“I was just looking [to] connect with my roots, connect with my people more than ever, connect with myself, with my history, with my culture. And I did it in a very honest way,” the rapper said of his album during last week’s Super Bowl LX halftime show press conference. “The opportunity to bring that feeling I put on that album to one of the biggest stages in the world is something that I never thought. … This is an album that is going to be in my heart for my whole life.”
In the months leading up to his Super Bowl halftime show performance, the rapper has seen it all — the good, the bad and the unnecessarily critical. The rapper experienced career highs like completing his record-breaking, 31-show residency in Puerto Rico and making history as the first Latin artist to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
But he’s also been met with vitriol from spectators who were less than welcoming upon learning that a Spanish-language rapper critical of the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants would headline such a quintessentially all-American spectacle like the Super Bowl.
President Trump announced last week that he wouldn’t be attending the Super Bowl because he didn’t agree with the NFL’s selection of Bad Bunny and Green Day, some of his vocal critics. Green Day, along with Coco Jones, Brandi Carlile and Charlie Puth, performed at Levi’s Stadium ahead of the big game on Sunday night.
Except none of that backlash matters to the global superstar. He isn’t for everyone — and honestly? He doesn’t care. Bad Bunny is just happy to be here.
“The biggest feeling has been grateful,” he said during the Super Bowl LX halftime show press conference. “I feel happy, but I’m just processing and taking [it] one day at a time, and just living.”
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