The 2026 Super Bowl, Seattle Seahawks versus the New England Patriots, played on three different screens at Taqueria El Rey in southwest Detroit but the sound of Bad Bunny’s voice singing “NUEVAYOLLLLL” drowned out any hope of hearing the game.
That didn’t seem to bother many of those gathered at the night’s event. The EventBrite flyer did, to be fair, label it a “Bad Bunny Super Bowl Watch Party” – not the other way around. Many had their backs turned from the game to chat over the blaring music or were up near the DJ booth, dancing with friends to a mix of Bad Bunny and old school reggaeton.
While some in the crowd of around 100 people that showed up on Sunday night were there for football, all of them were there for Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican reggaetonero who’s captured the heart of his island – they call him San Benito, or Saint Benito in English for his birth name – and fans across the globe. In 2025, the year he dropped Debi Tirar Mas Fotos, his sixth album and one packed with Puerto Rican pride, he was Spotify’s top-streaming artist for the fourth time with 19.8 billion streams.
“I’m here for the halftime show,” said Allanah Morales, 26, a Detroiter with Puerto Rican heritage who co-hosted the event. “I can’t even describe how excited I feel. I feel so much pride. This little island, we’re getting put on the map for one of what will probably be the biggest events in [Super Bowl] history.”
Many young people like Morales were eager to share why it’s a big deal that Bad Bunny’s played the halftime show, a decision the NFL announced in September. The NFL’s move sparked controversy among conservatives, including a number of Trump administration officials, who said his Spanish-language music would be exclusionary to an English-speaking audience. They also attacked the artist’s politics, given his open criticism of the current administration’s mass deportation agenda.
NFL officials defended the decision as one intended to unite Americans through a performance of one of the world’s most popular artists. Experts say the move was also strategic given Latinos have become the NFL’s fastest-growing fan base and the league’s ambitions for international growth.
Michigan gubernatorial GOP primary candidate Perry Johnson spent millions on ads encouraging Super Bowl viewers to ditch the official show for Turning Point USA’s rival performance, called the “All-American Halftime Show,” headlined by artists including Kid Rock.
Ariana Ayala, 28 of Detroit, dismissed the controversy and rival halftime show. “Puerto Rico is part of America,” she said.
Ayala doesn’t usually care about Super Bowl games but she searched for an event like this one, so she could watch Bad Bunny – a moment that feels culturally significant in the U.S., she said, given that “Hispanics are being looked at as other than.”
Rony Jimenez, 31, agrees.
“We got a Latino performing for an American football league,” he said. “He’s Latin American and American, it’s the best of both worlds. People want to make it about separation, but to me it’s about unity.”
The Oak Park resident is Venezuelan, and said his Latino pride is also why he was excited for the game: Though his own team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl, the Patriots’ kicker is “the only Venezuelan in the league,” so he rooted for New Englaned.
The divisive tone struck over the Bad Bunny Super Bowl show is exactly what Deanna Solis hoped to shake off with her cousins at Taqueria El Rey and why she made the hour-long drive from Toledo, Ohio for the event.
“We’re coming to celebrate and dance and have a good time with other people looking to, I don’t know, escape, come together, enjoy the message, listen to good music,” said Solis. “It’s a humanity thing.”
Solis and her two cousins, Jessica Gonzalez, 27 of Detroit and Juliana Solis, 22 of Novi, said they’re all huge Bad Bunny fans and before the halftime show said they’re main goal for the evening was to get people to dance.
The group had been salsa-ing since earlier in the event, when the dance floor was sparse. As halftime inched closer, it slowly swelled to over 100.
As Bad Bunny started his show, the crowd’s screams and cheers could be heard from outside Taqueria El Rey. Inside, people were on their feet, packed together and all facing the TV screen at the front of the room watching the man they’d come there to see.
The crowd erupted with each new song Bad Bunny cycled through and patrons started waving and lifting up a Puerto Rican flag at the start of “El Apagón,” a song steeped in Puerto Rican pride, about the island’s worsening power outages.
“This is what we needed,” said Joel Bielecki, 25, who is of Puerto Rican and Polish descent, after the show ended.
The energy in the room remained strong as the game resumed, potentially potent enough to keep the crowd dancing through the watch party’s 2 a.m. end time.
“We’re so proud to be Latino,” said Juliana Solis. “I would choose to be Latina in every lifetime.”
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit taqueria packed for Bad Bunny 2026 Super Bowl halftime show
Reporting by Beki San Martin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
