2026 Met Gala’s Dress Code Has Officially Been Announced

Garments from Comme des Garçons featured in the “Art of the In-Between” exhibition at the Met, 2017. (Photo: Rhododendrites via Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0)

The Met Gala is undoubtedly one of spring’s most highly anticipated events. Perhaps even more anticipated, though, is the gala’s dress code, which not only sets the tone of its red carpet, but that of the Costume Institute’s accompanying exhibition. Ahead of the celebrations on May 4, 2026, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Costume Institute have announced this year’s theme: “fashion is art.”

As with previous years, this dress code is equally abstract, but Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s professorial curator, hopes that guests will explore the relationship between artistic representations of the body and fashion as an embodied art form. This line of inquiry underpins the institute’s spring exhibition, titled Costume Art, which gathers some 200 artworks from the Met’s collection alongside 200 historical and contemporary garments and accessories. Notably, the exhibition will also inaugurate the Met’s new Condé M. Nast Galleries, a nearly 11,500-square-foot space named after the late founder of the eponymous media conglomerate.

“I wanted to focus on the centrality of the dressed body within the museum,” Bolton explains in a statement. “Rather than prioritizing fashion’s visuality, which often comes at the expense of the corporeal, Costume Art privileges its materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.”

Max Hollein, the Met’s CEO, echoes the sentiment: “Costume Art will demonstrate the museum’s innovative and forward-thinking approach to presenting Costume Institute exhibitions and will highlight the Met’s unique ability to position fashion within the context of more than 5,000 years of art represented in its collection.”

Unsurprisingly, the Met Gala boasts an illustrious line-up of co-chairs, including Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. The host committee, co-chaired by Zoë Kravitz and Anthony Vaccarello, also comprises some of contemporary culture’s biggest names, ranging from Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, and Misty Copeland to Sam Smith, Tschabalala Self, and Amy Sherald.

Last year, the Met Gala revolved around tailoring, while its accompanying exhibition, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, examined 300 years of Black fashion and dandyism. In 2024, the gala’s dress code was “garden of time,” resulting in several organic, floral, and sculptural garments.

Costume Art will open on May 10, 2026. Exhibition highlights include a 2022-23 suit by Glenn Martens in collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier, which is paired with a 1st–2nd century CE marble statue of Diadoumenos; a walking dress from around 1883 juxtaposed with Georges Seurat’s Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte; and a 1997–98 ensemble by Comme des Garçons, presented alongside Max Weber’s 1917 Figure in Rotation.

To learn more and stay updated about this year’s gala, visit the Met’s website.