It was a “mind blowing” idea, Jorge Perez remembers, two years after he first heard it: Bad Bunny wasn’t going to tour the US.
In August 2023, Perez – a tourism official who manages the island’s biggest concert venue, the Coliseo – got a phone call from two producers for Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, the genre-bending Puerto Rican rapper, singer, actor and occasional professional wrestler better known as Bad Bunny.
Bad Bunny, the producers said, wanted to skip the continental US on the tour for his upcoming album. Instead, he would stay in Puerto Rico for a run of shows, all at the Coliseo. If fans from outside Puerto Rico wanted to see Bad Bunny, they would need to come to San Juan after the first nine concerts. Those initial nine performances would be open only to island residents.
“I had no idea it was gonna be so huge as it really is,” Perez recalls from a nosebleed seat above the stage in the Coliseo. Bad Bunny “could have done this anywhere …Vegas, any large city, and he chose Puerto Rico, where his roots are.”
Never has Puerto Rico, or Puerto Rican music, experienced commercial and artistic success on the scale of Bad Bunny’s residency, which began in July and ends this week. The effect has been volcanic. Over the past three months, Bad Bunny has drawn an estimated $200 million into the economy so far, according to local economists, and Perez expects that after the residency ends on September 14, the final tally will be far higher.
Bad Bunny performs onstage at the Coliseo in July 2025. – Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images
It’s something not seen “in the 20-year history of the Coliseo itself or in the entertainment industry of Puerto Rico,” Perez says.
“It hasn’t only been the San Juan area,” Perez says. “This has impacted the whole island.”
People who come for Bad Bunny stay in local hotels, eat at local restaurants and even spend money on Bad Bunny-themed tours. Fans want to see his childhood home in Vega Baja, his church, the grocery store where he worked before he became one of the world’s biggest stars.
The boost was exactly what Puerto Rico needed, Perez says. The island has seen a “decade of slow economic movement.” First came Hurricane Maria in 2017, which killed nearly 3,000 people in Puerto Rico and shredded the island’s infrastructure. Then came COVID, which decimated the tourism industry worldwide for several years.
Perez thinks that after the residency ends, the ripple effects will keep bringing people to Puerto Rico, with the fans who saw Bad Bunny in concert leaving as “ambassadors” for the island.
Nonetheless, Perez says, “it’s gonna be difficult to top.”
‘We Latinos have to stick together’
Normally, this time of year would be the low season in Puerto Rico, with visitors avoiding the island’s powerful hurricanes. One wouldn’t know it, however, from the partying crowd at La Placita in San Juan.
Evelyn Aucapiña is one of many at La Placita who came to Puerto Rico to see Bad Bunny. She and a friend bought their tickets at the first chance they could, in the dead of Chicago winter.
“We were like, ‘we’re gettin’ out of here, it’s too cold,’” she says.
Aucapiña estimates she’ll spend around $2,000 for her whole trip, between hotels, flights and other expenses. It’s worth it, she says. She understands why Bad Bunny is avoiding the US mainland. While the residency has been planned for more than two years, in a recent interview with I-D magazine the singer said that he worried Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would profile and arrest fans at his concerts in the continental US.
Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny performs onstage during the first show of his 30-date concert residency on July 11, 2025. The first nine performances were reserved for locals. – Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images
“I have family members that live in fear,” Aucapiña says. “We Latinos have to stick together.”
Aucapiña sees the economic boom Bad Bunny has brought to Puerto Rico, combined with that care for his fans, as “the best of both worlds.”
“This is how Latinos are supposed to come together, in my opinion.”
Peruvian-Americans Owen Valasco and his girlfriend Leyla Gamonal agree. They spent $1,000 each on tickets and hotels for what they considered “a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“Us being Peruvian,” Valasco says. “If we had an artist as big as Bad Bunny is, I would love for them to do the same thing and bring awareness to Peru and tourism and to help the economy boom.”
A ‘better future’ in Puerto Rico
The San Juan coastline on September 12, 2025. – David von Blohn/CNN
The pain of leaving Puerto Rico for opportunities in the US is a constant in the island’s history, and in Bad Bunny’s music.
“No one here wanted to leave, and those who left dream of returning,” Bad Bunny murmurs in his song “Lo Que pasó A Hawaii.” “If one day it’s my turn, it’s gonna hurt so much.”
“I think that one of the main things that will come out of this residency,” Jorge Perez speculates, “is that the younger generation that has considered leaving Puerto Rico for better opportunities will say ‘We can stay in Puerto Rico. We can impact the world.’”
One of those young people is freelance illustrator Sebastian Muñiz Morales. Just 20 years old, Muñiz scored a job designing Bad Bunny’s official merch when he and a friend DM’d the rapper’s creative designer, who had put out a call on Instagram for artists to work with Bad Bunny.
Sebastian Muñiz Morales, 20, designed many of the shirts sold as merchandise for Bad Bunny’s residency in San Juan. – David von Blohn/CNN
“I just sent an emoji,” Muñiz recalls, sitting at his dining room table in Ponce, Puerto Rico. “We both sent an emoji, we didn’t say like ‘soy illustador grafíco, pick me!’”
The emoji worked. Though he still hasn’t met Bad Bunny himself, Muñiz’s designs are all over Puerto Rico. The first time Muñiz saw people in the wild wearing something he’d made was at a winter market in Old San Juan, just after Christmas.
“It’s very surreal,” he says. “It drove me back to a time where I was like, ‘Yo, I was drawing this at 2 a.m.!’”
The chief centerpiece of Muñiz’s illustrations is “El Concho,” a stylized toad that “screams Puerto Rican” and serves as Bad Bunny’s mascot for the residency. Muñiz’s shirts feature El Concho boxing, flying the Puerto Rican flag and hawking piragua, Puerto Rico’s distinctive style of shaved ice.
El Concho, a toad native to Puerto Rico, has become Bad Bunny’s mascot for the residency. – David von Blohn/CNN
Along with experiencing the residency as a member of the rapper’s team, Muñiz has witnessed its effect on the island with his own eyes. “In any town you go to, you’ll basically find two or three people, and I’ve talked to them – they’re here for Bad Bunny.”
Like many young people in Puerto Rico, he’s felt the pull of the outside world. He’s had friends who have left Puerto Rico for opportunities elsewhere.
“Puerto Ricans, we have this thought that ‘here, there’s no future,’” Muñiz says, but Bad Bunny “made us understand that Puerto Rico is more than that.”
“I mean, seeing Puerto Rico through it makes you feel a little more patriotic, feel better about where you’re from,” he continues, referring to the residency. “We’re not seeing it from another perspective, but rather what Puerto Rico really is.”
“I don’t have that thought anymore, like, ‘wow, I have to leave to have a better future,’ but instead, ‘I have to fight so that my better future is here.’”
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