Super Bowl Halftime Show 2021: Time, Channel and How to Watch

The Super Bowl may look a little different this year, but the halftime show is still bound to have people talking come Monday morning. As the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face off for the title, The Weeknd will take on the much-anticipated halftime performance during Sunday’s big game. You can watch the 2021 halftime show live on CBS at about 8-8:30 p.m. ET, or streaming live for free here.

The Canadian singer-songwriter, whose name is Abel Tesfaye, stayed atop the U.S. charts last year for 46 weeks with his single “Blinding Lights,” featured on the album After Hours, 37 of which was spent in the top five. That impressive run makes it the longest charted single in the North American region in the 62-year history of the Billboard Hot 100.

The Weeknd’s halftime performance may only come in at about 13 minutes in length, but the “Can’t Feel My Face” artist is making sure the show will be a true stunner, even putting up $7 million of his own money above and beyond usual production costs fronted by the Super Bowl organizers to “make this halftime show be what he envisioned.” He revealed the financials in a new interview with Billboard alongside his managers Wassim “Sal” Slaiby and Amir “Cash” Esmailian and XO’s creative director La Mar C. Taylor. The Weeknd and his team have “always had the Super Bowl on our bucket list,” Esmailian said. “We’ve always had timelines for all of our goals. It came a few years earlier than we expected.”

Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, where this year’s Super Bowl will be held, will only be a third full due to social distancing measures enacted to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Weeknd said that despite the lack of fans, he is putting even more energy into making the performance a showstopper. “We’ve been really focusing on dialing in on the fans at home and making performances a cinematic experience, and we want to do that with the Super Bowl,” the artist told Billboard.

The performance is also being curated by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation company, which is in a partnership with the NFL. Last year’s show was headlined jointly by Shakira and Jennifer Lopez and brought home an Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (Live) at the 2020 award show. Disclosure: PopCulture is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS.