Met Gala 2026 raises record $42 million amid boycott calls

A record $42 million flowed to the Costume Institute as boycott calls shadowed the Met Gala, with individual tickets priced at $100,000 and tables starting at $350,000. The fundraising total, which topped last year’s $31 million, underscored how the event remains both a cultural spectacle and a luxury gatekeeper.

Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour co-chaired the 2026 gala, while Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz led the host committee. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos served as honorary chairs and lead sponsors, a role that sparked protests outside the museum and criticism from some New Yorkers and members of the fashion and entertainment industries. The objections centered on the gala’s deep ties to wealth and access, even as the evening helped finance the museum’s Costume Institute.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art tied the dress code to its spring exhibition, Costume Art, with the theme “Fashion is Art.” The gala was the inaugural event in the museum’s new nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries adjacent to the Great Hall, a space that signals how seriously the institution is investing in fashion as museum-grade culture rather than a side attraction. The exhibition opens to the public on Sunday, May 10, 2026, and runs through January 10, 2027. The livestream began at 5:30 p.m. EDT, and The Met Fifth Avenue was closed Monday for the event.

The Met says the gala provides the Costume Institute’s primary source of annual funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions and operations, which makes the night more than a celebrity parade. It is also a financial engine that shapes what fashion history gets preserved, interpreted and elevated. That tension was especially visible this year, as the museum pushed a thesis about fashion as art while the public conversation outside focused on who gets to underwrite that story.

The 2026 theme followed 2025’s “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” an exhibition that examined Black style over more than 300 years through dandyism and was organized into 12 sections including Champion, Respectability, Heritage, Beauty and Cosmopolitanism. That backdrop matters because it showed how the gala can carry a serious cultural argument when the museum uses the red carpet to frame fashion as history, identity and power, not just branding. In 2026, the same platform turned toward art and authorship, while the money and the protests reminded New York that luxury culture still depends on unequal access.