The Met Gala 2026: Everything You Need To Know

The Met Gala will return to New York’s Fifth Avenue on Monday, May 4, 2026, in celebration of an exhibition exploring “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection.” It will be held in the nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries – a new permanent first-floor space for fashion exhibitions that is adjacent to The Met’s Great Hall – and showcase almost 200 artworks, including paintings, sculptures and artefacts, alongside approximately 200 historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute.

Speaking to American Vogue ahead of the announcement, curator Andrew Bolton said: “What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body. It’s the common thread throughout the whole museum… the dressed body is front and center in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked. It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”

Notably, “Costume Art” is the first of Bolton’s exhibition themes without a subtitle – a decision that, he says, was very intentional. “I thought, this is exactly what it should be. It’s bold, it’s strong, it’s a statement of intent. [The goal] is not to create a new hierarchy. It’s just to disband that hierarchy and to focus on equivalency – equivalency of artworks and equivalency of bodies.”

The Met Gala 2026 theme is Costume Art and will explore fashion’s status as art “because of, and not in spite of, its relation to the body,” says Bolton. While specific details on the dress code itself are limited, we’re expecting to see lots of thoughtful interpretations of the exhibition’s key topics.

The Met Gala 2026’s co-chairs are yet to be announced, but they will be expected to join Anna Wintour and the new head of editorial content, Chloe Malle, as they welcome guests to the exhibition on fashion’s biggest night.

The Met Gala was established in 1948 by fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert as a fundraiser for the recently launched Costume Institute, but it was not until 1972 that former American Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland transformed the event into a star-studded gala with a glamorous annual theme hosted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since becoming chairwoman of the Met Gala in 1995, American Vogue’s global editorial director Anna Wintour hosts the yearly event on the first Monday in May and oversees the benefit committee, decides on the guest list, seating arrangements, and approves celebrity outfits.

The staircase of the Metropolitan Museum has granted us some truly iconic style moments over the years. The ‘naked’ dress is hot right now, but it was Cher who did it first when she showed up to the 1974 Met Gala wearing a jaw-dropping sheer Bob Mackie gown adorned with sequins and feathers. In 2006, Sarah Jessica Parker embraced all things punk as she stepped out clad in a tartan ensemble designed by Alexander McQueen for AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion. Supermodels Gisele Bündchen, Naomi Campbell and Amber Valletta have all stunned in Versace over the years, while former MET co-chair Michaela Coel and Kim Kardashian have both left unforgettable impressions in custom Schiaparelli. At her last appearance in 2025, Rihanna arrived fashionably late, announcing her third pregnancy in a custom look by Marc Jacobs. Needless to say, she stole the show – and we suspect she will this year, too.

The theme of the 2025 Met Gala was Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, which explored the importance of clothing and style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora. It featured a selection of pieces by Grace Wales Bonner, Dapper Dan, Louis Vuitton by Pharrell Williams and the late Virgil Abloh. Anna Wintour’s 2025 co-chairs Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky and Pharrell Williams were in attendance, along with Ayo Edebiri, Zendaya and Cynthia Erivo, who all made our best-dressed list in custom gowns by Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy respectively.