Met Gala 2026 red carpet begins, stars arrive in Costume Art looks

The cobblestone carpet outside The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened on a night designed to turn celebrity dressing into a measure of influence. Venus Williams, Anna Wintour, Chloe Malle, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, Ashley Graham, La La Anthony, Emma Chamberlain, Cara Delevingne and Zuri Hall were among the early arrivals as the Met Gala 2026 began with looks tied to Costume Art, the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition.

This year’s gala, officially the Costume Institute Benefit, took place on Monday, May 4, 2026, with the red carpet livestream starting at 5:30 p.m. EDT. The Met said the event is held annually on the first Monday in May and remains the Costume Institute’s primary source of funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions and operations. For one night, the museum also closed The Met Fifth Avenue, underscoring how central the gala has become to the institution’s financial engine and public image.

The 2026 gala’s co-chairs were Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour, a line-up that again fused music, film, sports and fashion authority into one of the country’s most closely watched social stages. Coverage around the dress code, “Fashion Is Art,” pointed toward the kind of maximal interpretation the Met Gala tends to reward, where the carpet is not just a photo call but a public declaration of status, taste and market reach. The strongest signal from the first arrivals was not just who attended, but which names now sit at the center of that cultural economy.

Costume Art itself sharpened that message. The exhibition explores depictions of the dressed body across The Met’s collection and pairs garments with artworks to show the relationship between clothing and the body. That framing places fashion in conversation with painting, sculpture and museum history, making the carpet feel less like a celebrity parade than a live argument over who gets to define art, beauty and prestige in America right now.

The institution behind the spectacle has been building that reach for decades. The Costume Institute began as the Museum of Costume Art in 1937, merged with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1946 and became a curatorial department in 1959. The 2026 event followed last year’s Met Gala, which centered on Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, another reminder that the theme changes not only the clothes, but the broader cultural conversation around race, formality and power on fashion’s biggest stage.