Met Gala’s 2026 dress code has been revealed as “Fashion Is Art,” a call for guests to treat the red carpet as a living canvas.
On Monday, February 23, Vogue announced the theme of the Monday, May 4 gala as "Fashion is Art," which reflects the Metropolitan Museum of Art's spring 2026 exhibition titled "Costume Art."
It is revealed that in November 2026, the exhibition will launch the Costume Institute’s first permanent 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries next to The Met’s Great Hall — “a huge moment for the Institute,” said curator Andrew Bolton.
“It will be transformative for our department, but I also think it’s going to be transformative to fashion more generally — the fact that an art museum like The Met is actually giving a central location to fashion," he continued.
Bolton's exhibition addressed “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection,” by presenting 5,000 years of artistic expression through paintings, sculptures, and other objects from The Met.
He further explained: “What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body. It’s the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was, this epiphany: I know that we’ve often been seen as the stepchild, but, in fact, the dressed body is front and center in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked. It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”
The Costume Art exhibit runs May 10, 2026, to January 10, 2027, following the May 4 Met Gala, with curator Andrew Bolton organizing it around three body themes: commonly represented, often overlooked (like aging and pregnant bodies), and universal (anatomical) forms.
It was confirmed that Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour will serve as the co-chairs for the 2026 gala.
