Lighting Bad Bunny’s tour

A love letter to Puerto Rico wrapped in a stadium-sized extravaganza, here’s how the creative team crafted the lighting for Bad Bunny’s biggest tour to date

Words Oliver Webb

Born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico to an English schoolteacher and a truck driver, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny) spent his childhood singing in church choirs. His parents introduced him to a wide range of musical genres, which he’s often said influenced his career. In December 2018, Bad Bunny released his debut studio album, X 100pre, taking the world by storm.

Since then, his career has surged. He’s now the first solo Latin artist to headline the Super Bowl half-time show (Super Bowl LX in 2026) and the first artist to win album of the year at the Grammys for a fully Spanish-language record, Debí Tirar Más Fotos. He was also the most-played artist on Spotify last year, racking up a staggering 19.8 billion streams with tracks such as NUEVAYoL, DtMF and EoO.

Bad Bunny’s career has also taken off on screen. He’s been a recurring guest on Saturday Night Live and across the last few years he’s starred in films such as Bullet Train, Caught Stealing, Happy Gilmore 2 and, most recently, Toy Story 5.

In November 2025, he launched the Debí Tirar Más Fotos Tour, his sixth concert tour in support of the acclaimed album. Demand has been staggering, with the tour selling over 2.6 million tickets globally in its first week alone. Beginning 21 November, 2025 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the tour concluded 22 July 2026 in Brussels, Belgium. Bad Bunny also deliberately avoided performing in the US reportedly due to fears of ICE targeting his fans. The tour ultimately grossed $467.5 million with a reported 3.08 million tickets sold across 55 stadium shows.

Power to Puerto Rico

During the Super Bowl half-time show earlier this year, Bad Bunny’s performance also helped boost the artist’s popularity and raise awareness of Puerto Rico’s past. During the show, he triumphantly waved the Puerto Rico flag – a flag that was banned in Puerto Rico between 1948 and 1957 to suppress the island’s independence movement. The punishment could get you up to ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Bad Bunny proudly called out the names of countries from across South, Central and North America, plus the Caribbean, as well as featuring a display of nearly 49 flags representing nations and territories across the entire Americas. In an act of defiance, he finished the show by projecting a message onto the Jumbotron, which read ‘The only thing more powerful than hate is love’.

Aesthetics have always been an integral part of Bad Bunny’s live shows, and Debí Tirar Más Fotos was no different. He often places Puerto Rican culture at the heart of his performances, which is then accompanied by visual storytelling and numerous guest artists.

One of the signature features of the tour was Bad Bunny’s La Casita, a signature pink stage set designed to look like a classic suburban Puerto Rican house with bright pink walls and a porch. The VIP stage has hosted a number of celebrity guest appearances throughout the tour, with stars such as Kylian Mbappé, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Salma Hayek all in attendance.

Bunny in disguise

The Bad Bunny Debí Tirar Más Fotos Tour ran on Disguise’s GX 3+ media servers. The tour started rehearsals on GX 3 and upgraded to GX 3+ making it one of the earliest live deployments of the GX 3+. Disguise powered the show’s massive main screen, which spanned 10,752×2,816 pixels running all the visuals in real time, night after night, across stadiums worldwide, as well as the smaller side IMAGs.

Working with Notch, Disguise powered the show’s camera-driven visuals, VHS-style effects, live crowd photography woven into the show, and a real-time finale sequence – allowing the audience to feel connected to the show and Puerto Rican culture.

Designed to dazzle

With the stadium dates spanning nearly 20 countries across four continents, the production required lighting design that operated at a scale few tours have ever reached. Lighting designer Marcus Jessup was behind the large-scale operation, and the Debí Tirar Más Fotos Tour is the largest production of his career to date. He also worked with Bad Bunny on the artist’s No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí (I Don’t Want to Leave Here) residency in San Juan last year. He has also recently collaborated with creative house STURDY.co on projects for Rauw Alejandro, Peso Pluma, Quevedo and now Bad Bunny.

Jessup admits that the design process began not with the lighting rig, but with the stage itself. Designing for an entirely stadium-based circuit demands different creative decisions and each stadium is unique and presents its own set of challenges. In terms of his fixture selection across the international dates, Jessup relied on GLP, specifically 136 JDC2 IP and 14 MAD MAXX units. Over 1100 fixtures were incorporated in total, supplied by 4Wall Entertainment, including 500-plus IP-rated lights from Elation: 259 Proteus Rayzor Blades, 93 SŌL IV Blinders and 100 DTW Blinders.

Jessup selected GLP’s 14 MAD MAXX fixtures to help create the tour’s stadium-scale impact, producing powerful aerial beams visible even in the larger venues, such as Estadio Monumental (Mâs Monumental) in Buenos Aires.

Additionally, the 136 JDC2 IP units provided the show’s visual rhythm, combining high-output strobe, RGB colour effects and segmented control for dynamic animation. The fixtures gave Jessup the flexibility to move between intimate moments and large-scale spectacle while keeping the lighting focused on the narrative.

Crowd lighting was also essential to the design of the tour, and Jessup relied on 64 of Elation’s Paragon S moving heads which were all dedicated to illuminating the audience. The lighting design helped support the tour’s themes of Puerto Rican identity. Custom-designed PixMob LED camera badges also transformed audience interaction, relating to the tour’s photography concept. The tour also utilised advanced modular video displays supplied by INFiLED and Triton Visual Technology delivered immersive visual content synced to the global stadium scale.

The production reflected Bad Bunny’s commitment to celebrating Puerto Rican culture. But despite the success of the tour, it’s not always been smooth sailing for the artist. Donald Trump called the decision to headline Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl half-time show ‘absolutely ridiculous’, if anything proving that there’s still a long way to go for Latin artists and Latinos living in the US. Other critics weren’t happy with a show performed in Spanish, calling it ‘un-American’ despite the fact that around 59 million people in the US speak the language, and perhaps forgetting that Puerto Rico is indeed US territory. But, as the stats prove, there is high demand worldwide for an artist who unashamedly continues to promote Puerto Rican culture and embrace his heritage.

Meet the team

• Charly Camina Video director and media server engineer
• Mandy Pagán Operator on the show
• Vishal Sharma Screens producer
• Marcus Jessup Lighting designer

This article was first published in the Autumn 2026 issue of LIVE.