Will BTS Take Over From Bad Bunny? Inside the Real Race for the 2027 Super Bowl Halftime Show | NFL News
Bad Bunny just blew up Super Bowl LX. His Apple Music halftime show at Levi’s Stadium pulled record TV and streaming numbers, sparked a week of political outrage and turned 12 minutes of Spanish-language music into the story of the night.Now the league and Roc Nation have to find someone to walk into that fire next. Super Bowl LXI lands at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., on Feb. 14, 2027, and every outlet from Billboard to SB Nation and Complex is already throwing darts at the board.
BTS and a full K-Pop moment are the loudest early demand
Billboard’s fan poll is not a Vegas line, but it shows where the online hunger is. In that poll, BTS sit north of 80% of the vote, with BLACKPINK, Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, Post Malone, Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Drake, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z all miles behind.That lines up with SB Nation’s idea of an outright K-Pop ode at SoFi. Their writers floated BTS anchoring the show, with BLACKPINK on a reunion run and even a fictional band from K-Pop Demon Hunters dropped into the mix.If the NFL decides the only way to top Bad Bunny’s global reach is to lean straight into Korean pop and TikTok culture, this is the move. It is risky for a league that still treats anything non-English like a science experiment, but it is also the clearest path to numbers that look bigger than 2026.
Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber give the NFL the safe nuclear option
SB Nation’s first two names are Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber, for a reason. Roger Goodell has already said the league would welcome Swift at halftime, and the math is obvious: if you want the broadest possible audience, you call the woman who just rewired the touring economy.The hold-up is not demand, it is timing. Swift told Jimmy Fallon in 2025 that she is not eager to build halftime choreography while Travis Kelce is still getting hit every week, and that concern has not magically disappeared. Until she says otherwise, Swift feels like the league’s dream, not its plan.Justin Bieber is different. He just crushed a Grammys performance, sits among the top global streamers and has more than 15 years of hits to stitch into a 12-minute medley. With the Super Bowl falling on Valentine’s Day in 2027, a Bieber-heavy pop set full of stadium sing-alongs is the kind of “nobody gets mad at this” choice the NFL loves.
Jay-Z and a Roc Nation flex would turn halftime into a power play
Complex’s early list leans into something more political: a Jay-Z moment. Hov has overseen the halftime era that ran from Shakira and Jennifer Lopez to Rihanna and now Bad Bunny. At Super Bowl LX, he even walked the field in a hoodie that read “The game needs me.”Letting him finally take the stage in Los Angeles would double as a victory lap for Roc Nation and a way to quiet fans who still see the partnership as corporate damage control. A Jay-Z show also opens the door to a Pharrell-style friends set, which Complex floated as another option, stacking guests like The Weeknd or Drake around one producer’s catalogue.It would not match the chaos of Bad Bunny’s political staging, but it would send a clear message about who really calls the shots on Super Bowl Sunday.
So who actually feels most likely to follow Bad Bunny right now?
If you strip away fan wars and stan polls, a few lanes stand out in mid-February 2026:
- A BTS-led K-Pop takeover, with BLACKPINK and others, if the NFL decides it has to chase young global viewers at all costs.
- A Swift or Bieber headliner if the league wants maximum reach with minimum political headache.
- A Jay-Z or Pharrell-and-friends show if Roc Nation wants to turn SoFi into an industry summit.
Public betting and prediction markets are already tossing out names like Bieber, Chappell Roan and others, but as of today there is no official decision from the league.
