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Bad Bunny is not only known for his music, but also for his style. Here in 2022 at the Met Gala.
Picture: Keystone
He is currently one of the most successful musicians - and will soon be the first Superbowl headliner to sing only in Spanish. Bad Bunny is a pop star who pushes boundaries. Here's what you need to know about him.
Only the biggest pop stars in the world can play the Super Bowl halftime show. And currently the biggest of them all is Bad Bunny. The 31-year-old musician, who mixes reggaetón, trap and pop, will take to the stage at one of the biggest television events in the world in February 2026.
However, Bad Bunny differs from his predecessors in that it will be the first halftime show that is not mainly sung in English. He sings and raps exclusively in Spanish.
And so his halftime show will be part of a series of records set by Bad Bunny. In 2023, he was the first Latin American headliner at the Coachella festival. He was the most-streamed artist on Spotify for three years in a row before Taylor Swift knocked him off the throne in 2021.
Bad Bunny's album "Un Verano Sin Ti" was the first Spanish-language album ever to be nominated for a Grammy in the Album of the Year category in 2022. His latest album "DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS" was the first album of 2025 to pass the seven billion streams mark on Spotify just last Sunday.
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, as he is known by his real name, was born in Puerto Rico, an outlying territory of the USA. His mother was an English teacher, his father a truck driver. He uploaded his first songs to SoundCloud while at college.
He owes his stage name to a childhood photo. "I think I was six years old at the time. I was so angry. It was Easter at school and the teacher chose me to dress up," he told the "E-News" portal.
A label signed him in 2016. Collaborations with Cardi B, Drake and J Balvin soon followed. His success was sealed.
In the summer of 2025, Bad Bunny played one concert after another in Puerto Rico. There were 30 in total. His aim was to boost the island's economy and celebrate Puerto Rican culture.
In November, Bad Bunny went on a world tour, performing in Europe, South America and Australia, among other places. He sold over 2.6 million tickets in just one week. But he is skipping the USA - for fear that the concerts could be targeted by the ICE immigration authorities.
He told the magazine "i-D": "There was the problem that the damn ICE might be outside my concert. That was something we talked about and was very concerning." He wants to protect his fans from this.
In addition to music, Bad Bunny also appears as an actor. He has appeared in "The Fast and The Furious 9", "Bullet Train" and "Happy Gilmore 2", among others. But his childhood dream was always to wrestle. He had his first match in 2021, for which he trained for three months.
He takes things from wrestling for his music career. "In wrestling, fans love to be surprised. I want to create the same emotion with my music," Bad Bunny told "allure" magazine.
Bad Bunny is also known for his style, which constantly challenges gender norms. In an interview with "allure", he said: "Going shopping with my mother was one of my favorite things to do because I could lose myself in the women's department, admiring the combinations, the colors, the cuts, the designs."
And so Bad Bunny wears colorful clothes and skirts and paints his fingernails. In one of his music videos, he performs entirely in drag.
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Bad Bunny's appearance at the Superbowl is therefore likely to be an event not only musically, but also symbolically. And unsurprisingly, Trump supporters are already taking offense at his performance. "Massive Trump hater. Anti-ICE activist. No songs in English", wrote right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson on X. "The NFL destroys itself year after year".
But Bad Bunny's success speaks for itself. He is currently the biggest pop star in the world - and the Halftime Show belongs to the biggest. Whether Trump supporters like it or not.
Super Bowl LX sees the Seattle Seahawks take on the New England Patriots. The game will take place at Levi's Stadium in California and will be broadcast live in Switzerland on free-to-air TV on RTL from midnight on February 8-9.
