Bad Bunny was unveiled as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show performer earlier this week, sparking a mix of excitement and displeasure from different segments of the American public.
While many of the Puerto Rican rapper’s fans were ecstatic to learn that he’d be headlining the event, which takes place at Levi’s Stadium on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, Calif., others were critical of the National Football League’s choice.
Negative reactions to the selection of Bad Bunny as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime headliner seem to stem from two key factors: that he primarily raps and sings in Spanish, and that he’s an advocate of immigrants amid the ongoing deportations and ICE raids in the United States.
A proud Spanish-language rapper
Born in Bayamón and raised in the northern part of Puerto Rico, specifically in Vega Baja, Bad Bunny has Puerto Rican pride deeply ingrained in his artistry and public image. The 31-year-old Latin sensation, who recently concluded his 31-show residency in San Juan, describes his latest album, 2025’s Debí Tirar Más Fotos, as being a love letter to Puerto Rico.
Bad Bunny, whose 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti became the first Spanish-language album to be nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammys, has made his love for performing in Spanish common knowledge. He is often credited with pushing Spanish-language rap into the mainstream.
But Bad Bunny’s lack of English-language hits is seen by some as a problem.
“It’s not about who is already a fan of this dude. He came out of no where and doesn’t sing in English,” Josie Glabach, a libertarian commentator, wrote on X following the news that Bad Bunny would be the next halftime show performer. “It’s about recruiting people away from the light and into the darkness at a consequential time. Keep you children away from it.”
On X, Benny Johnson, a conservative YouTuber, also criticized Bad Bunny for being a “massive Trump hater” and an “anti-ICE activist” and for having “no songs in English.”
“The NFL is self-destructing year after year,” Johnson added.
While the “Veldá” rapper has said he is open to the idea of performing in English, it isn’t something he’s going to do just to appease certain demographics.
“It’s just that I feel more comfortable in my own language. … I think in Spanish, I feel in Spanish, I eat in Spanish, I sing in Spanish,” Bad Bunny told Vanity Fair in 2023. As for whether he’d ever sing in English, he said, “I am never going to do it just because someone says I need to do it to reach a certain audience.”
An outspoken supporter of immigrants
Others have accused Bad Bunny of hypocrisy for agreeing to perform at the Super Bowl while excluding the continental U.S. from his upcoming Debí Tirar Más Fotos World Tour in response to the ongoing immigration enforcement operations conducted by the Trump administration.
“There were many reasons why I didn’t show up in the US, and none of them were out of hate — I’ve performed there many times. All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent,” he told i-D magazine in September. “Latinos and Puerto Ricans of the United States could also travel here [to Puerto Rico], or to any part of the world. But there was the issue of — like, f***ing ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”
This isn’t the first time Bad Bunny has voiced his support for immigrant and Latino communities. In July, the rapper unveiled his “Nuevayol” music video, which features a powerful pro-immigrant message. Near the end of the video, a voice, which some believe mimics Trump’s, can be heard over the radio saying, “I made a mistake. I want to apologize to the immigrants in America. I mean the United States. I know America is the whole continent. I want to say that this country is nothing without the immigrants. This country is nothing without Mexicans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Venezuelans, Cubans.”
During the 2024 presidential election, Bad Bunny shared a video in support of his homeland after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” during a Trump rally in New York.
One X user’s criticism of Bad Bunny headlining the 2026 Super Bowl despite choosing not to include any U.S. stops on his upcoming tour had garnered more than 400,000 likes as of Tuesday afternoon.
“The concept of refusing to perform in the us to protest against the ICE and then agreeing to do the superbowl lmfao,” read the post.
Fans of Bad Bunny immediately came to his defense, arguing that his decision to skip the U.S. on his upcoming tour was made out of concern for the safety of his fans.
One fan has received 37,000 likes on X with a post stating: “‘protest against ICE’ no it was to PROTECT people from ICE and the super bowl has a very different audience let’s use critical thinking pls.”
Another post, which has received 38,000 likes, read, “He didn’t perform in the states because of concern of ice being outside of his 30+ locations with his predominately all Hispanic fanbase. He’s performing at the Super Bowl which is attended by mostly non Latinos. Why isn’t it clicking for yall?”
Others have argued that the selection of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer is even more significant given the typical demographic makeup of the Super Bowl’s audience.
A 2025 Media Culture report found that the sporting event’s at-home audience is mostly male (57%) and white (68%), with Gen X-ers and baby boomers making up 60%. A separate survey conducted by Statista in 2023, which gauged the Super Bowl’s importance, found that white respondents reported a higher percentage of “very important” ratings compared with Black, Latino and Asian respondents.
“He’s going to sing in Spanish at the most american event in the current political climate,” another X user posted. “It is clearly an intentional message.”
