With an announcement expected soon, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell cranked up the hype machine for the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show to 11 on Wednesday morning (Sept. 3) when he appeared on the Today Show and casually dropped the biggest name in the pop universe as a possibility.
Asked if it’s possible that Taylor Swift might do the honors on Feb. 8 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., Goodell played it coy while saying the loudest part out loud. “We would always love to have Taylor play. She is a special, special talent, and obviously she would be welcome at any time,” he said.
Asked by co-host Savannah Guthrie if a Swift-time show is in the works, Goodell said, “I can’t tell you anything about it.” When Guthrie wondered if it was a “maybe,” Goodell continued the tease, adding, “It’s a maybe.”
Swift’s name has bubbled up as a possible halftime performer in the run-up to what is typically an early September announcement for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is that she has become a staple at NFL games over the past two years thanks to her relationship with Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, to whom she got engaged last month. The singer also has a new album coming out on Oct. 3, The Life of a Showgirl.
Whoever it is, they will have big shoes to fill after Kendrick Lamar crushed it at this year’s halftime in February. Billboard has gotten in on the speculation, with everyone from Swift to Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, Justin Bieber, Drake, BTS, Bay area legends Green Day and Metallica and Jay-Z making our short list.
While avowed Swiftie Goodell kept it vague with Today, he added, “I’m waiting for my friend Jay-Z. It’s in his hands. I’m waiting for the smoke to come out.” Jay-Z and his company Roc Nation, have been producing the Super Bowl halftime shows since 2020. While the roster has leaned into the R&B/hip-hop vein since then, with shows by The Weeknd, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent, Anderson .Paak and Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, Usher and Lamar last year, Swift’s name has perennially been in the mix as a possible performer on the biggest stage of the year.
And in her inimitable fashion, Swift has been subtly dropping Easter eggs that seem to point to a possible Santa Clara Sunday in February. In advance of the album that Swift has teased will bring back her big pop era, the singer announced the LP on the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast last month, noting that she learned she’d secured the rights to her master recordings just a few months before attending this year’s Super Bowl.
She also noted that she used to not pay attention to the big game growing up, though her dad was a huge NFL fan. “My relationship with sports was like, I grew up in Pennsylvania, I always heard my dad yelling at the screen watching Eagles games,” she said. “I was up in my room playing guitar, learning instruments, playing piano — I was focused on different things. I would go to sporting events so that I could sing the national anthem. I know every halftime show from the Super Bowls, but I didn’t watch the sports.”
Though her focus on the halftime show was seemingly random, she also did a deep dive into her latest obsession: sourdough bread. That was telling because the mascot for the San Francisco 49ers franchise — whose home stadium will host the game — is Sourdough Sam and the this season will end with the 60th Super Bowl, a number that just happens to match the percentage Swift used to describe her level of bread talk lately.
Swift also kept bringing up the number 47 during the pod, thanking co-host Jason Kelce for “screaming for like 47 seconds for me” and saying she’d visited “47,000” countries on her Eras Tour (actually 21). It’s worth noting that the 47th of 149 shows on the global Eras tour was, of course, July 2023 at Levi’s Stadium. Never a coincidence, as Swifties know all too well.
Watch Goodell talk potential Swift halftime performance below.
