Abstract: We consider the metric-affine formulation of bumblebee gravity, derive the field equations, and show that the connection can be written as Levi-Civita of a disformally related metric in which the bumblebee field determines the disformal part. As a consequence, the bumblebee field gets coupled to all the other matter fields present in the theory, potentially leading to nontrivial phenomenological effects. To explore this issue we compute the post-Minkowskian, weak-field limit and study the resulting effective theory. In this scenario, we couple scalar and spinorial matter to the effective metric, and then we explore the physical properties of the VEV of the bumblebee field, focusing mainly on the dispersion relations and the stability of the resulting effective theory.