Met Gala 2026 theme Costume Art spotlights fashion as embodied art

The Met Gala used its latest theme to make a blunt case for fashion as more than display. With “Fashion is Art” as the dress code, the 2026 fundraiser was tied directly to Costume Art, the Costume Institute exhibition that opens May 10 at The Met Fifth Avenue and runs through January 10, 2027.

The show is built around nearly 400 objects and will inaugurate the museum’s nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says Costume Art will pair garments from its collection with artworks from across the museum to show the relationship between clothing and the body. That framing pushes the night beyond celebrity pageantry and into a larger argument about how fashion is staged, worn, and read as performance.

The exhibition’s focus on the body is underscored by 25 mannequins inspired by real people and diverse body types. That choice reflects Andrew Bolton’s continuing effort to expand how the museum presents fashion, not as a sealed-off object in a case, but as something shaped by movement, proportion, and presence. In that sense, the gala’s most revealing message was not any single red-carpet moment, but the institution’s insistence that clothing becomes art through the body that carries it.

The Met Gala also remains a financial engine. The museum says the event is the Costume Institute’s primary annual source of funding for exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and operations. The scale of that fundraising has hardened into an exclusive economic ritual: tickets cost $100,000 each this year and tables started at $350,000, a steep rise from $75,000 per ticket last year.

The event’s history reinforces how far it has traveled from its origins. The Costume Institute Benefit began in 1948 as a midnight supper with $50 tickets, organized by Eleanor Lambert, who called it the “Party of the Year.” It grew under Diana Vreeland and has been overseen by Anna Wintour since 1995, except for 1996 and 1998. The Costume Institute became a full curatorial department in 1959, and the gala has since become one of the museum’s most visible tools of public financing.

This year’s leadership reflected the event’s mix of fashion, sport, music, and wealth. Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour served as co-chairs. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos were honorary chairs, while the host committee included Anthony Vaccarello, Zoë Kravitz, Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Gwendoline Christie, Misty Copeland, A’ja Wilson, and others. The Met Fifth Avenue closed for the event on May 4, and the livestream began at 5:30 p.m. EDT, turning the gala into a coordinated global spectacle built to sell fashion as embodied art.