Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show Makes a Historic Seven Emmy Sweep
The Apple Music performance became the first Spanish-language program to win Outstanding Variety Special (Live).
Summary
The Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny took every category it was nominated for at Emmys Night 1, formerly the Creative Arts Emmys
Its win for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) made it only the second halftime show ever to claim the top program prize and the first Spanish-language program to do so
The victory caps a landmark year that also saw Debí Tirar Más Fotos become the first Spanish-language album to win the GRAMMY for Album of the Year
Bad Bunny‘s Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show has become the most awarded Super Bowl performance in Emmy history, sweeping all seven categories it was nominated for at the 2026 Creative Emmy Awards. The wins hand the Puerto Rican superstar his first Emmy and cement a 13-minute set as one of the most decorated live productions of the season.
The sweep was built on craft as much as star power. Alongside the top prize for Outstanding Variety Special (Live), the show collected trophies for directing, music direction, choreography, sound mixing, lighting design, technical direction and camerawork, a spread of wins that reads like a full accounting of everything that goes into staging a halftime show. Each category rewarded a different discipline behind the performance, which threaded Puerto Rican imagery and Latin music through guest turns from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin.
The Outstanding Variety Special (Live) win carries the most weight historically. It marks only the second time a Super Bowl halftime show has taken the category’s top program prize, following the 2022 performance that united Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent. More significantly, it is the first Spanish-language program to win the award, a distinction that mirrors the barrier-breaking arc Bad Bunny has been on for the better part of a year.
The Emmy arrives seven months after Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos) became the first Spanish-language album to win the GRAMMY for Album of the Year, stacking two of the industry’s highest honors within a single historic run. The through line is a body of work that has kept pushing Spanish-language art into spaces it had never occupied.
The performance itself was framed by the message Bad Bunny delivered from the stage. “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” he said as he opened the show, a line that landed amid the noise surrounding his selection to headline. On Saturday night, Emmy voters offered a rejoinder of their own.
The recognition didn’t stop at the Super Bowl though. The Saturday Night Live season opener that Bad Bunny hosted won Outstanding Makeup for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program, giving a second production featuring the artist an Emmy on the same night and rounding out an evening that belonged, in almost every measurable way, to him.
