It’s only the first week of February, but Bad Bunny is making history yet again.
The Puerto Rican singer will headline the Super Bowl halftime show Sunday, just a week after “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” became the first Spanish-language album to take home a Grammy for album of the year.
Bad Bunny will be the first Latin male artist to headline the halftime show and the first Latin artist to take on music’s biggest stage solo, after Shakira and Jennifer Lopez teamed up in 2020.
The performance, first announced in September, “goes beyond myself. It’s for those who came before me and ran countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown,” Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, said in a statement.
“This is for my people, my culture and our history,” he said.
Last year, Compton’s Kendrick Lamar became the first rapper to headline the Super Bowl alone. He took over the halftime stage, bringing out guests including Samuel L. Jackson and SZA.
Here’s everything you need to know about Sunday’s performance.
When will Bad Bunny perform?
The “Nuevayol” singer will take the stage after the game’s second quarter. The game will kick off at 3:30 p.m. Pacific/6:30 p.m. Eastern. That means the halftime show will begin sometime between 5 and 5:30 p.m.
The Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots will go head to head at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
Who else is performing at the Super Bowl?
Green Day will kick off festivities on Sunday with a special performance to celebrate the Super Bowl’s 60th anniversary.
The rock band, which was formed in a subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area, will perform starting at 3 p.m. Pacific/6 p.m. Eastern, the league announced in January.
“We are super hyped to open Super Bowl 60 right in our backyard!” Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a statement last month. “We are honored to welcome the MVPs who’ve shaped the game and open the night for fans all over the world. Let’s have fun! Let’s get loud!”
The band, like Bad Bunny, has been outspoken against President Trump.
Singer-songwriter Charlie Puth will also take the stage ahead of kickoff to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The singer is known for pop hits like “Attention” and “We Don’t Talk Anymore” with Selena Gomez.
Brandi Carlile will sing “America the Beautiful” and Grammy-winning artist Coco Jones will perform “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also before the game.
What can I expect from Bad Bunny’s performance?
Bad Bunny made one promise in a trailer promoting his Super Bowl performance: “The world will dance.”
The singer is seen grooving to his hit “Baile Inolvidable” with people of all ages in the trailer, released in mid-January.
“Débi Tirar Más Fotos” is Bad Bunny’s sixth studio album and what he has called his “most Puerto Rican album ever.” The album, released just over a year ago, embraces rhythms native to Puerto Rico, like plena and salsa, and centers the island’s colonial history.
The album quickly rose to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. Last summer, Bad Bunny hosted a 30-date concert residency in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Sunday’s show will be the second time the Puerto Rican singer takes the halftime stage, after appearing with Shakira and Lopez in 2020.
Bad Bunny’s halftime show announcement was met with criticism from conservatives. President Trump called the decision “absolutely ridiculous.”
The singer, who took home three Grammys on Sunday, has long been outspoken against the Trump administration and its treatment of immigrants. He used his time on stage to denounce the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country.
“I want to dedicate this award to all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams,” he said in his acceptance speech for album of the year.
When accepting his award for música urbana album, Bad Bunny’s speech earned loud applause from the audience: “Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out.”
“We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans,” he said.
Bad Bunny will sit down for a live interview with Apple Music Radio hosts Zane Lowe and Ebro Darden on Thursday. Apple Music co-head Rachel Newman said Bad Bunny’s upcoming halftime show “is a special full-circle moment for us.”
The show “feels like the culmination of a deep, long-term partnership that spans most of the last decade, at a time period in which he’s forever changed global pop music,” she said in a statement.
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