Met Gala 2026 dazzles with fashion as art on green carpet

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s green and white carpet became a public argument for fashion’s artistic legitimacy as celebrities arrived for the 2026 Met Gala under the dress code “Fashion is Art.” With Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour serving as co-chairs, the annual Costume Institute Benefit leaned hard into the idea that clothes can do more than adorn the body, they can frame it as the work itself.

The evening, held Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York City, was built around the spring exhibition Costume Art, which opens to the public at The Met Fifth Avenue on May 10 and runs through January 10, 2027. The show will inaugurate the museum’s nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, a permanent fashion space off the Great Hall, and will feature nearly 400 objects. The Met said the exhibition is designed to explore the centrality of the dressed body by placing garments from the Costume Institute in conversation with artworks drawn from across the museum’s collection.

That curatorial frame gave the gala its clearest theme. Andrew Bolton said the exhibition underscores fashion’s role as an art form and its connection to every department of the museum. In practice, the night’s strongest statements came from guests who treated styling, silhouette and presence as part of the same composition, rather than as separate pieces. The result was a carpet that looked less like a parade of celebrity and more like an argument for craftsmanship, reference and form.

The host committee made that argument even broader. Women athletes and performers held visible places in the lineup, including Venus Williams, A’ja Wilson, Misty Copeland and Aimee Mullins, alongside Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, LISA, Teyana Taylor, Angela Bassett, Gwendoline Christie, Alex Consani, Elizabeth Debicki, Lena Dunham, Paloma Elsesser, Sam Smith, Lauren Wasser, Anna Weyant, Yseult, Adut Akech, Sinéad Burke, Rebecca Hall, Tschabalala Self, Amy Sherald and Chase Sui Wonders. Their presence reinforced the exhibit’s focus on the body as a site of meaning, discipline and display.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos served as honorary chairs and lead sponsors. The Met said the Gala proceeds provide the Costume Institute’s primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions and operations, tying the spectacle on the carpet directly to the museum’s public mission.