<\/p>\n
Bad Bunny was unveiled as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show performer<\/a> earlier this week, sparking a mix of excitement and displeasure from different segments of the American public.<\/p>\n While many of the Puerto Rican rapper\u2019s fans were ecstatic to learn that he\u2019d be headlining the event, which takes place at Levi\u2019s Stadium on Feb. 8 in Santa Clara, Calif., others were critical of the National Football League\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s an advocate of immigrants amid the ongoing deportations and ICE raids in the United States.<\/p>\n Born in Bayam\u00f3n 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\u2019s Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos, as being a love letter to Puerto Rico<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bad Bunny, whose 2022 album Un Verano Sin Ti<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n But Bad Bunny\u2019s lack of English-language hits is seen by some as a problem.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about who is already a fan of this dude. He came out of no where and doesn\u2019t sing in English,\u201d Josie Glabach, a libertarian commentator, wrote on X<\/a> following the news that Bad Bunny would be the next halftime show performer. \u201cIt\u2019s about recruiting people away from the light and into the darkness at a consequential time. Keep you children away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n On X<\/a>, Benny Johnson, a conservative YouTuber, also criticized Bad Bunny for being a \u201cmassive Trump hater\u201d and an \u201canti-ICE activist\u201d and for having \u201cno songs in English.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe NFL is self-destructing year after year,\u201d Johnson added.<\/p>\n While the \u201cVeld\u00e1\u201d rapper has said he is open to the idea of performing in English, it isn\u2019t something he\u2019s going to do just to appease certain demographics.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d Bad Bunny told Vanity Fair in 2023<\/a>. As for whether he\u2019d ever sing in English, he said, \u201cI am never going to do it just because someone says I need to do it to reach a certain audience.\u201d<\/p>\n Others have accused Bad Bunny of hypocrisy for agreeing to perform at the Super Bowl while excluding the continental U.S. from his upcoming Deb\u00ed Tirar M\u00e1s Fotos World Tour in response to the ongoing immigration enforcement operations conducted by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were many reasons why I didn\u2019t show up in the US, and none of them were out of hate \u2014 I\u2019ve performed there many times. All of [the shows] have been successful. All of them have been magnificent,\u201d he told i-D magazine in September<\/a>. \u201cLatinos 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 \u2014 like, f***ing ICE could be outside [my concert]. And it\u2019s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.\u201d<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the first time Bad Bunny has voiced his support for immigrant and Latino communities. In July, the rapper unveiled his \u201cNuevayol<\/a>\u201d music video, which features a powerful pro-immigrant message<\/a>. Near the end of the video, a voice, which some believe mimics Trump\u2019s<\/a>, can be heard over the radio saying, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 2024 presidential election, Bad Bunny shared a video in support of his homeland<\/a> after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as an \u201cisland of garbage\u201d during a Trump rally in New York.<\/p>\n One X user\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe concept of refusing to perform in the us to protest against the ICE and then agreeing to do the superbowl lmfao,\u201d read the post.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n One fan has received 37,000 likes on X with a post stating: \u201c\u2018protest against ICE\u2019 no it was to PROTECT people from ICE and the super bowl has a very different audience let\u2019s use critical thinking pls.\u201d<\/p>\n Another post, which has received 38,000 likes, read, \u201cHe didn\u2019t perform in the states because of concern of ice being outside of his 30+ locations with his predominately all Hispanic fanbase. He\u2019s performing at the Super Bowl which is attended by mostly non Latinos. Why isn\u2019t it clicking for yall?\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s audience.<\/p>\n A 2025 Media Culture report<\/a> found that the sporting event\u2019s 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<\/a> in 2023, which gauged the Super Bowl\u2019s importance, found that white respondents reported a higher percentage of \u201cvery important\u201d ratings compared with Black, Latino and Asian respondents.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s going to sing in Spanish at the most american event in the current political climate,\u201d another X user posted. \u201cIt is clearly an intentional message.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s fans were ecstatic to learn that he\u2019d be headlining the event, which takes place at Levi\u2019s Stadium on Feb. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2064168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[30802,376590,326110,46381,383572,346955],"class_list":["post-2064167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-bad-bunny","tag-benny-johnson","tag-puerto-rican","tag-puerto-rico","tag-spanish-language","tag-super-bowl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Why-some-see-Bad-Bunny-as-a-controversial-choice-for.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2064167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2064170,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2064167\/revisions\/2064170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2064168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2064167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2064167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2064167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A proud Spanish-language rapper<\/h2>\n
An outspoken supporter of immigrants<\/h2>\n