Bad Bunny Reveals New Details of Puerto Rico Concerts and World Tour

It’s a drizzly May afternoon when I arrive at the Equinox Hotel in Hudson Yards to interview one of the world’s biggest music stars. Before I can even introduce myself to Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — known to millions as Bad Bunny — a security guard leads me to a private, monochromatic 25th-floor conference room where he suggests we can speak. All that’s visible from the windows is dense clouds. Other meetings between men in blazers are taking place in smaller rooms.  

Martínez emerges with an entourage of six, sporting a pair of black Ray-Bans that hide his eyes, his curls pushed back by a sweatband. He peers inside the conference room for a split second and immediately rejects the idea. “This looks like the scene of a federal investigation or like an episode of ‘Black Mirror.’ I want to be outside, even if it’s raining. I need some air.” 

We travel down an elevator and exit through the lobby, where we’re met by a doorman who excitedly calls out to the now smiling superstar, enunciating the middle vowel of his first name: “¡Ben-iii-to! ¡Amigo, Boricua!” Variations of this interaction happen several times as we walk toward Hudson River Park, with New Jersey facing us in the distance. He shakes the hand of a young woman who confesses how much his music means to her. She’s visibly eager to tell him, “I’m from Puerto Rico too!” 

“Doesn’t this feel much better?” he asks as we begin walking along a stretch of piers. The cool breeze, the open sky and the distant lull of the buzzing city seem to insist that we take our time. 

“I’m here often, but I don’t really get to …,” he begins, gesturing to the view of the river. “New York is somewhat of an extension of home for me. But obviously, nothing compares to the real deal. Some things you’ll only find in Puerto Rico.” 

While we walk and talk — him in Spanish, I in Spanglish (“Ask me again in Spanish,” he jokes at one point. “You’re getting too comfortable speaking to me in English”) — Martínez manages to hold eye contact with a quiet but welcoming intensity. And yet, like a distracted child, his attention occasionally drifts to his entourage, who are strolling a few feet behind us. When I bring up the intricacies of and the business behind his multimillion-dollar successes, I find myself having to pull him back in, re-earn his focus. Still, even in those flickers away, his presence is commanding. 

“I’ve always felt that I read people extremely well,” Martínez, a Pisces, says of his circle of friends and his business associates, which often overlap. Case in point: As we leave the boardwalk for coffee at Urbana Cafe, one of the people with us is his best friend of 18 years, Jomar. “I’m very intuitive with who and how I spend my time. I take care of my mental and heart space, bien cabrón. There are people that I work with who I’ve known since I was a kid, and what a blessing that is — to know that despite the outside world and time passing, or anything, they still love me the same.”

By the end of 2024, Martínez had been on tour for nearly a full year, away from his native island, basing himself, when not on the road, in Los Angeles and New York. After conquering the world — he grossed a whopping $435 million on tour in 2022 alone and has sold the equivalent of 100 million albums — it was time to come home. 

In a massive love letter to the place that raised him, he will perform a 30-night residency at the Coliseo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, less than an hour from Vega Baja, where he grew up. It runs weekends from July 11 to Sept. 14 and will be followed by a 56-date world stadium tour, with completely different production that begins in November in the Dominican Republic and is set to conclude in Belgium on July 22, 2026. 

“The idea for the residency was always there, for as long as I can remember,” he says. “But it became difficult to ignore, the more time passed. I’ll admit, it was hard to complete my last tour, because all I wanted to do was move into this chapter.” 

That chapter is defined by his sixth solo studio LP, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos),” a cultural time capsule that threads together the folkloric history of Puerto Rico using plena, jíbaro, salsa and reggaeton, each song name-checking legends from Willie Colón to Héctor and Tito.  

“I don’t ever want to hit a point where I’m constantly thinking about the next thing, but this album came when it wanted to because it had to,” he says. Searching for the best analogy, he compares the process to a sneeze. “It started with one line that led to me writing more, and eventually I discovered just how much I was missing home.” 

Martínez is spending the month in Manhattan crossing off a list of impressive to-dos: Attend the Met Gala; record voice-overs for Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming action film “Caught Stealing” (where he’ll portray a gangster opposite Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz); sit courtside at multiple New York Knicks games; make a third appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” this time for the season finale.  

In that episode, he performs two “Debí” songs, “PERFuMITO NUEVO” and “NUEVAYoL.” With a Knicks cap tilted over his brow, he sings as if he’s speaking directly to the diaspora living just beyond the stage — across Spanish Harlem and the Bronx and beyond to the millions of viewers who share a similar pride in their Latin American heritage. 

It’s that interrelationship that’s made him a cultural icon among communities long overlooked, including queer Latinos and generations of immigrants who see their complexities reflected in him. As the number of deportations continues to rise in the United States under the Trump administration, Martínez has used his social media following of 49 million to report sightings on the island, posting a video that referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as “sons of bitches” who can’t seem to leave “people alone and working.” Whether it be dressing in drag for his “Yo Perreo Sola” music video in 2020, or shedding light on neocolonialism in “Debí,” Martínez represents these communities unapologetically, denouncing the injustices and patriarchal values historically found in reggaeton and broader Latin culture.

Needless to say, the residency — titled “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” (“I Don’t Want to Leave Here”) — is much more than a series of concerts: It’s a celebration of the island and its biggest homegrown success story, a defiant and joyous declaration to the world from a region that has been brutalized for centuries by hurricanes, gentrification and the American government.  

The first nine shows of “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” have been made exclusively available to residents of the island, who, to purchase tickets, were required to present proof of residence at one of nine locations. Within eight hours of their release, more than 80,000 tickets had been sold, totaling more than $11 million in revenue. 

“Before the residency, my fantasy for the longest time was to do a massive free show in Puerto Rico that could be locals only,” Martínez says, acknowledging the improbability of that happening without financial complications and safety concerns. “And if it were up to me, all of the shows for the locals would be free, but what we’ve got planned now is next level.” 

The remaining 21 dates will welcome fans from near and far. Around 400,000 people are expected to attend, two-thirds of them from overseas — a huge boon to the local economy. More than 700,000 fans registered to receive the general pre-sale codes. 

Martínez is also the first Latin artist to sell out stadiums in European hotspots like Poland and France. He’s set to perform a string of 12 shows in Spain, where he broke the record for the most tickets sold in the country on a single tour.  

“I don’t know if this is a good or bad habit yet, but I prefer not to think about the numbers or the weight of everything. Because then I start, ‘Should I be proud? Should I be nervous? Should I just act like this is totally normal for me?’” He bows his head for a few seconds. Locking eyes again, he says, “When they first showed me the routing for the stadium tour, I was like, ‘Two nights in Sweden?!’ Bro, I thought it was a prank.” But whether he’s in a packed arena overseas or back home in Puerto Rico, his approach to the shows stays the same. “I like to perform like nobody there knows who I am or what I’ve accomplished,” he says. “The stage is where I’m the most present and happiest. I’ll probably be doing this until I’m an old man.” 

He goes on: “At times, I do think, cabrón, what I’m signing up for is a lot. But the way I see it, I’m not a doctor; I’m not a teacher; I’m not someone who has to wake up every morning at 5 a.m. to lay down concrete on a busy road to survive. My job is to fucking sing, and even though it comes with its own set of sacrifices, it feels silly to complain about it.” 

These days, Martínez’s day-to-day looks vastly different from what it did a dozen years ago, when he was a college student at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, bagging groceries for money and recording music as a hobby. Born March 10, 1994, he grew up in a lower-middle-class household with his father, a truck driver, his mother, a teacher, and two brothers. He sang in the choir of his Catholic church until he was 13 and continued making beats and writing music until he hit it big on SoundCloud in 2016, with his unique blend of trap and reggaeton. The song “Diles” was the first to take off. Then he met the CEO of indie label Rimas Entertainment, Noah Assad, who’s been his manager for the past eight years.  

“He handles the boring stuff,” Martínez cracks and dissolves into laughter. Martínez knows he can be meticulous, maybe difficult, when it comes to his creative decisions. “Sure, I can be a little stubborn at times, but never excessively so,” he adds. “And now that we’ve reached”— he lifts his arm, gesturing toward the sky — “this level,  Noah knows we’ve earned the freedom to chase even our wildest ideas.” 

Without spoiling details about the show itself, Assad says that it will take the production team 10 days to rebuild their oversize stages at the Coliseo; the stages at the moment of this interview are housed on a lot on the side of a freeway in San Juan, disguised by an unassuming tent. 

“This was the safest way to do it because Benito’s capable of getting onstage hours before the show and saying, ‘I need this changed.’ He did that for the ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’ tour, when he said the stage needed to be way smaller the night before opening day,” Assad recalls. “We told him it was impossible and then made it happen in less than 12 hours, so maybe it’s our fault.”  

The team has recruited more than 1,000 local workers, from stagehands to crew, in preparation for the shows. “We’re trying our best to follow the nature of the album and preserve Puerto Rican traditions across all aspects of what we do,” Martínez says.

When concertgoers arrive on the island, they’ll be equipped with a map of where to visit and what to do — from ziplining to picking coffee in the central mountains. At the venue, vendors will serve everything from bacalaítos to empanadillas. “It’s important to me that we translate the feeling of really being proud of where you come from in a way that is still honest,” Martínez says, noting that the residency shows will likely be shorter than his usual three-hour sets to help him preserve his stamina. “On stage, we’ll be following the pace of the album, from the first song to the last.”

In recent years, Martínez has been expanding into many areas of entertainment, with a presence in sports (just check out his 24-minute montage on WWE) and as an actor in movies such as “Cassandro,” in which he played a gay wrestler, and “Bullet Train” opposite Brad Pitt and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. 

“I like to pick projects that teach me new things,” he says about his choice of high-profile, often unexpected roles. “And I don’t like to settle on the first thing that comes. An acting performance is as important as a concert.” 

Assad says later, “People tend to think that just because he’s Bad Bunny, he gets what he wants, but that couldn’t be further from the truth in the film industry. The way he got his role in Netflix’s ‘Narcos: Mexico’ was by standing in the line at a casting call and auditioning in person just like everyone else.” 

After “Caught Stealing” and Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore 2” are released, Martínez’s acting career will have to go dark for a while. Some fan theories posit that the stadium tour will serve as a “Bad Bunny Eras Tour,” complete with album-specific segments that celebrate his career.  

“First of all, I’m not Taylor Swift,” he says. “I want to clarify now so that they don’t get so excited: It’s not going to be organized that way. It’s still very much a tour for ‘Debi,’ with some older songs sprinkled in.” 

Conspicuously absent from Bad Bunny’s 2025-26 tour dates? The United States. “It’s unnecessary,” he says, pointing out that fans in the U.S. have had no shortage of opportunities to see him perform over the past six years. What about an official concert film? Also unnecessary, he says. 

Assad says, “We record almost all his shows, but we’ve made it a point to not publish concert footage content that stays up and lives there forever. We’ve had conversations about doing a film for the residency, and we are having our conversations about doing it for the world tour, but there’s no pressure on us.”

Skipping a concert film isn’t an oversight, but a deliberate choice that allows Martínez to focus on making the live show matter. In an era when fans can binge endless streams of content from their favorite artists, the musician and his team are investing in his stage presence. “He wants to create memories,” Assad says, “and share emotions with the individuals willing to listen.” 

As the evening draws to a close, Martínez flips the script: “You’re not going to ask me who I’m dating now?” It feels like a trap he’s carefully baited. I had asked about his meaningful relationships earlier, and he had deflected. So I go for it again, and open the floor — and he boyishly laughs me off. 

Who’s who in Bad Bunny’s orbit has been a hot topic of tabloid blabber ever since he temporarily relocated to Los Angeles in 2023. That’s when he regularly appeared in paparazzi shots with one of the city’s most media-saturated dynasties, the Kardashians — specifically, in an on-again-off-again romance with Kendall Jenner. They seem to be just friendlies now, but the fan response has lingered.  

For many, the image of their hometown hero rubbing elbows with Hollywood’s elite was all the proof they needed to brand him a sellout. That suspicion lives even now, just weeks before his residency kicks off — some critics still questioning the optics of opening the island to thousands of tourists while being the author of a song like “TURiSTA,” which likens a shallow fling to the clueless entitlement of a tourist. 

“I’m still me, my greatest friends are still the ones from my childhood, and in the middle of it all, there’s always Puerto Rico,” he says.

“It’s not like I’m living a detached reality — I still live on the island. Of course, there’s a line you hit in terms of relatability when you become famous. But Puerto Rico has a very rough and real duality to it: One moment you can say, ‘I love living here; I’m proud to be from here,’ and other times, you’re like, ‘Fuck, man, pa’l carajo, todo’ [‘To hell with everything’].” 

He concludes, “That’s why I chose to call this tour ‘I Don’t Want to Leave Here.’ It’s not always paradise, but it’s also a place that requires you to exercise enough resistance to say, ‘I don’t want to leave, and no one can make me.’ It’s a phrase that comes from pride, pain and love.”  

But no matter how real he may be, there’s no question that things have changed. Moments later, as if on cue, a line of black Escalades appears to take him back to his hotel. 

“See? Sometimes they’re too good at their job,” he whispers. “Because of all the privacy measures, some days I feel like I spend them mostly in the car. I appreciate it, of course, but it’s a lot.” 

He politely declines the service, opting to walk instead.

Styling: Law Roach/The Only Agency; Hair: Ryan Austin; Grooming: KC Fee/Redefine Representation; Production: Alexey Galetskiy; Look 1 (Cowboy hat – pink wall): Hat: Binata Millinery; Sunglasses: Dita; Top, pants, bolo tie and belt: Kid Super; Look 2 (Stripe sweater in doorway): Top and pants: Paradis; Shoes: Dhruv Kapoor; Rings: Alex Moss; Look 3 (Red sweatsuit, Cover): Jacket and pants: Willy Chavarria; Rings: Alex Moss; Socks: Calvin Klein; Look 4: (Bunny jacket): Jacket: Kenzo; Briefs and socks: Calvin Klein: Look 5 (Baseball hat): Jacket, shirt and shorts: Paradis; Hat: PDF; Shoes: Adidas; Look 6 (Plaid hat): Full look: Charles Jeffery Loverboy, Glasses: Dolce & Gabbana