Bad Bunny closed his No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí residency in San Juan on Saturday night (Sept. 20) with a three-hour celebration that felt less like a pop show and more like a love letter to Puerto Rico — capped by a salsa-soaked finale that put the genre’s heartbeat front and center. The last concert, “Una Más,” streamed globally and set a new record as the most-watched single-artist Amazon Music livestream to date, extending the island’s party to living rooms around the world.

Across 31 sold-out nights at El Coliseo de Puerto Rico (El Choli), roughly 400,000+ fans rotated through the island’s biggest arena — about 18,000 each night — with the residency credited for hundreds of millions in local economic impact and a rare, intentional spotlight on Puerto Rican culture.

A finale that breathed salsa

Though the show ranged through reggaetón and Benito’s biggest hits, its last act moved deliberately into tradition: plena and bomba interludes gave way to full-band salsa, stretching songs the way an old-school salsa concert does — horn lines pealing, percussion surging, and each player taking a turn while Bad Bunny shouted out names.

At one point, with the arena jammed to the rafters, the crowd clapped the clave while a conguero drove the groove from center stage — a simple, electric moment that said everything about what this residency has tried to do: put Puerto Rico’s rhythms back at the center of the conversation.

It was reminiscent of Héctor Lavoe and the Fania All-Stars in their prime — a frontline of heavyweights passing solos, the crowd riding the clave, and that feeling that the song could go anywhere as long as the groove held. Saturday night at El Choli had that same electricity: not a retro tribute, but the living thing, scaled to an arena and offered to an audience that’s hearing salsa as salsa — loud, proud, and led by an artist at the absolute center of pop.

Marc Anthony joins for “Preciosa”

For the curtain call, Marc Anthony walked on and, together with Bad Bunny, delivered “Preciosa,” Rafael Hernández’s immortal ode to the island — the kind of goosebump duet that instantly belongs to the country’s collective memory. Amazon’s cameras caught it; Puerto Ricans everywhere felt it.

“Baile Inolvidable” becomes exactly that

All year, salsa fans have had Baile Inolvidable on repeat — and in the residency’s home stretch, the song blossomed live, with charts that leaned into the montuno and let the brass breathe. For many younger fans who discovered the genre through Benito’s album Debí Tirar Más Fotos, this was their first taste of a real salsa blow-up in an arena.

Why this matters for salsa

Salsa people felt it instantly: stadium-sized arrangements, solos that breathed, the crowd locked into the clave, and a Marc Anthony finale that honored the canon— delivered by pop’s biggest Latin star to listeners raised on perreo. That’s not just nostalgia; it’s a passing of the torch. This is how the next wave discovers the music — the same way a teenager in the 1960s might’ve stared up at Lavoe and the Fania All-Stars and thought, “This is my music.”

Bad Bunny didn’t just salute salsa; he gave it a megaphone. And judging by the viewership record and the roar inside El Choli, the kids were listening.