Colman Domingo hosts Saturday Night Live on April 11, 2026, with Anitta set as the musical guest for episode 17 of the show’s 51st season. The booking gives the Brazilian star a place in SNL history: she is the first headliner from Brazil to take the stage on the late-night staple.
Anitta, born Larissa de Macedo Machado in Honório Gurgel in Rio de Janeiro, built that moment over two decades of reinvention. She began singing at 8 as a member of her parish church, was studying English and dance by 11, and later graduated with a public administration certificate before her career took off.
Her rise in Brazil came fast. In 2013, she won a Best New Artist award from the São Paulo Association of Critics, and that same year her single Meiga e Abusada became one of the most requested songs at radio stations across the country while the video for Show das Poderosas became YouTube’s most watched music video in Brazil. She took her stage name after watching the 2001 TV series Presença de Anita, then adopted it after record producer Renato Azevedo discovered her on YouTube.
By 2016, she was already working as a cross-format star. That year she hosted the third season of Música Boa Ao Vivo and performed at the Rio Olympics opening ceremonies alongside Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. She ended the year with the Best Brazilian Act award at the MTV Europe Music Awards, a marker of how firmly she had moved from local hitmaker to national brand.
The international push widened in 2017 with Switch, her first English single with Iggy Azalea, and a revamped version of Sua Cara from Major Lazer, which became the first Portuguese-language song to chart on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic list. By 2020, she had signed with Warner Records’ U.S. label and released Me Gusta with Cardi B, a track that topped charts in the U.S. and 87 other countries. In 2022, she moved to Sony Music Publishing, keeping her career in motion as her audience stretched well beyond Brazil.
What makes the April 11 appearance matter is not just that Anitta is playing SNL; it is that the show is finally giving its stage to a Brazilian headliner whose career has already crossed language, market and format boundaries. She once described the image she wanted to project as being “could be sexy without looking vulgar; girl and woman at the same time,” and that mix of polish and provocation has helped drive her global reach. Domingo’s episode now gives that arc a new U.S. showcase, and for Anitta the next step is simple: turn a history-making booking into a performance the audience remembers after the credits roll.
