2026 Met Gala Theme Announced by The Met: “Costume Art
- Merna Atef
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
What is the Met Gala 2026 theme?
On 17 November 2025, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vogue announced that the 2026 Met Gala will be built around the theme “Costume Art”, the title of the Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition.
Curator in charge Andrew Bolton says the show is inspired by “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection,” bringing fashion out of the basement and into a central position in the museum.
Rather than asking whether fashion can be art, the theme starts from the assumption that clothing is already part of art history. Paintings, sculptures and objects from across The Met’s 5,000-year collection will be shown alongside historical garments.
Met Gala 2026 Costume Art theme: key dates and details
For anyone planning coverage — or outfits — the calendar is already locked in:
Met Gala date: Monday 4 May 2026, in line with the tradition of holding the gala on the first Monday in May.
Exhibition dates: 10 May 2026 – 10 January 2027.
Location: The show will inaugurate the Costume Institute’s new Condé M. Nast Galleries, nearly 12,000 square feet of permanent gallery space adjacent to The Met’s Great Hall.
Support: The project is made possible by Jeff and Lauren Bezos, with additional sponsorship from Saint Laurent and Condé Nast.
As usual, the Met Gala will act as the fundraising benefit for the Costume Institute and will share the same theme as the exhibition.
Teen Vogue notes that co-chairs, dress code and red-carpet hosts have not yet been announced; those details typically arrive a few months after the theme reveal.
Inside “Costume Art”: what the exhibition will show
The exhibition “Costume Art” will bring together around 200 artworks with roughly 200 garments and accessories, connecting fashion to objects from all 16 of The Met’s curatorial departments.
According to Bolton, the show is organised around the body rather than around designers or eras. It’s divided into three broad groups of “body types”:
Bodies that are everywhere in art – like the classical body or the nude body.
Bodies that are often overlooked – such as ageing bodies or pregnant bodies.
Universal bodies – including the anatomical body.
Sections highlighted by Vogue include “The Naked Body,” “The Pregnant Body,” “The Classical Body,” and “The Anatomical Body,” each pairing artworks (for example, Albrecht Dürer’s Adam and Eve) with fashion pieces by designers such as Walter Van Beirendonck, Rei Kawakubo, Renata Buzzo and Georgina Godley.
The design of the exhibition also underlines the message:
Mannequins will stand on six-foot pedestals, with artworks built into the same structures so the viewer sees the clothes first.
Artist Samar Hejazi has created mirrored mannequin heads, so visitors literally see themselves reflected in the dressed bodies on display.
Bolton’s stated goal is to “disband the hierarchy” between art and fashion and to highlight the “equivalency of artworks and equivalency of bodies.”
Why ‘Costume Art’ is a turning point for the Met’s Costume Institute
For the Costume Institute, “Costume Art” isn’t just another blockbuster show — it marks the moment fashion finally moves into a permanent, high-profile space at the heart of The Met.
Bolton points out that fashion has traditionally been viewed as a “stepchild” within the museum, often literally in the basement. By giving fashion a dedicated, central gallery and a theme that needs no subtitle, the museum is making a clear statement: garments and dressed bodies are as fundamental to the story of art as painting or sculpture.
The 2026 theme also follows the 2025 Met Gala’s focus on Black style — “Superfine: Tailoring Black Styles”, with a dress code of “Tailored for You” — showing how the Costume Institute is increasingly using its exhibitions to broaden whose bodies and histories are treated as worthy of the big hall.
What we don’t know yet
At the time of writing, a few major details about the Met Gala 2026: Costume Art are still to be confirmed:
Dress code: Vogue typically reveals the precise dress code months after the theme; Teen Vogue notes that nothing has been announced yet.
Co-chairs and hosts: The 2026 co-chairs and red-carpet hosts are also still under wraps.
Guest list: As always, invitations are confidential and will only be obvious once the steps of The Met start filling up. What is clear is the direction of travel: with “Costume Art,” the Met is using its biggest night — and its newest galleries — to insist that fashion is not just decoration for art history; it is art history.
