The NFL, Apple Music and Roc Nation announced Monday that Jay-Z will headline the Super Bowl LXI halftime show on Feb. 14, 2027, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
The rapper will follow Bad Bunny, whose show at Super Bowl LX averaged 128.2 million viewers, the fourth-most for a halftime performance, ESPN reported. Kendrick Lamar’s 2025 show holds the record at 133.5 million.
The league made the announcement during halftime of the Cowboys-Eagles Monday Night Football game on Oct. 26, Fortune reported. The game will air on ESPN and ABC and stream on Disney+, and it will be ESPN’s first live Super Bowl, according to Fortune.
In a statement, Jay-Z said the road from his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, to the Super Bowl stage “has been a journey” and that the run “continues to be a dream come true,” ESPN reported. Fortune put the earlier quote in context: the rapper’s 1996 debut came three decades ago.
Roc Nation, the entertainment company Jay-Z founded in 2008, will executive produce the show. Hamish Hamilton, who directed Beyoncé’s 2013 halftime show, will direct, Fortune reported.
The booking closes a long-running loop. Roc Nation became the NFL’s live music entertainment strategist in August 2019, a deal reportedly worth $25 million over five years, and the league renewed the partnership in October 2024 without disclosing terms, Fortune reported. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said his only request when the league first signed Roc Nation was that Jay-Z perform “whenever the moment felt right to him,” ESPN reported.
Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, has said in the past that he was not interested. Fortune reported that he turned down the Super Bowl LII halftime show in 2018. ESPN reported that in 2019 he said that if the conversation was about him performing, “we can just end this conversation now.” Before Super Bowl LX in January, he said, “I thought it would be selfish to pick myself too early,” according to Fortune.
The pick also draws criticism. Fortune reported that Colin Kaepernick, in an interview with NBC News, said the rapper has a “guilty conscience” over the league’s deals. Fortune also cited an unnamed fan quoted by Pro Football Network who asked how an artist picks himself for the halftime show.
Jay-Z has won 25 Grammy Awards from 89 nominations, second only to his wife, Beyoncé, ESPN reported. He was the first rapper inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, in 2017, and entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
His live draw is strong. Touring Data reported that his three sold-out Yankee Stadium shows in July grossed about $42.3 million from roughly 137,000 tickets, Fortune said.
Halftime performances have become a measure of cultural reach. The NFL said the Bad Bunny show set a record of four billion social media views in its first 24 hours, Fortune reported. Canada News Media covered the sports world’s reaction to that show and published photos of its highlights.
Neither the NFL nor Roc Nation has said whether guests will join Jay-Z on stage or what he will perform. Canadian broadcast arrangements for Super Bowl LXI have not been announced in the sources reviewed by Canada News Media.
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Sources: ESPN (Oct. 26, 2026) and Fortune (Oct. 27, 2026).
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