Green Day delivered a high-octane opening ceremony performance at Super Bowl LX on Sunday, 8 February, bringing its trademark pop-punk swagger to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara — and reminding audiences that the band’s politically charged catalogue remains as resonant as ever.

The Grammy-winning trio fronted the NFL’s commemorative segment marking the Super Bowl’s 60th anniversary, a celebratory sequence that also honoured the MVPs who have defined the championship across the past six decades.

As the stadium programme turned to the league’s history, Green Day anchored the anniversary showcase with a brisk, crowd-pleasing set designed for maximum spectacle and momentum.

The segment blended nostalgia with live-event intensity, pairing archival legacy with a contemporary arena performance that played to the band’s strengths: speed, swagger, and singalong hooks.

Green Day performed a rousing medley drawn from its seventh studio album, American Idiot — a record that has long functioned as both a mainstream rock landmark and a pointed cultural critique.

The band opened with “Holiday”, before moving into “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and closing the sequence with “American Idiot”.

The medley leaned into the album’s stadium-ready scale while retaining the jagged edge that made it such a defining release in the mid-2000s.

Ahead of the show, lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong emphasised the symbolic weight of performing so close to the band’s roots.

The Berkeley, California group — whose hometown sits across the San Francisco Bay from Levi’s Stadium — framed the appearance as both a homecoming and a moment of recognition.

"We are honored to welcome the MVPs who've shaped the game and open the night for fans all over the world," Armstrong said in a January statement. "Let's have fun! Let's get loud!"

Green Day’s Super Bowl performance drew heavily from an album that was explicitly shaped by American political and media culture in the years following 9/11.

Released in 2004, American Idiot was inspired by the post-9/11 era and the social unrest that followed the Iraq War. Its title track, widely regarded as one of the band’s most enduring protest songs, criticised US media coverage of the yearslong Middle Eastern conflict.

The group has continued to position itself as a politically outspoken presence, particularly during the Trump era.

During a 2016 performance at the American Music Awards, Green Day altered the lyrics to its track “Bang Bang” to target the then newly-elected president: "No Trump. No KKK. No fascist USA."

Green Day’s political commentary has not been confined to major televised stages.

While performing at a pre-game party in San Francisco on Friday, Armstrong criticised Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

"To all the ICE agents out there, wherever you are, quit your … job," Armstrong said at the time. “Quit that … job you have.”

Green Day’s opening ceremony slot was part of a broader, star-led entertainment programme for Super Bowl LX.

The night’s musical line-up also includes pop singer Charlie Puth, Americana artist Brandi Carlile, R&B singer Coco Jones, and halftime headliner Bad Bunny.

The Super Bowl match-up between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots kicked off at 6:30 p.m. ET.

The halftime show begins after the second quarter, with Bad Bunny expected to take the stage at roughly 8:00 to 8:30 p.m. ET, though there is no official start time.

As is typical, the precise timing will depend on the flow of the first half — including stoppages, penalties, timeouts and injuries.

For Green Day, the Super Bowl was not merely a nostalgic victory lap. The band’s decision to foreground American Idiot — arguably its most politically explicit body of work — functioned as a reminder of its long-standing identity: an arena rock act that never fully surrendered its protest DNA.

In a night engineered for maximum commercial reach, Green Day’s set offered something rarer: a mainstream platform for a catalogue built on dissent, delivered with the same raucous energy that first made the band a Bay Area institution.

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