Met Gala 2026 Sets Fashion Is Art as the Dress Code

On Monday, May 4, the Met Gala returns with a dress code that is intentionally broad and materially specific. Fashion Is Art is tied to Costume Art, the Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, opening May 10 in the new Condé M. Nast Galleries.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has confirmed Fashion Is Art as the dress code for the 2026 Met Gala, scheduled for May 4, the annual benefit that launches the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition. The exhibition, titled Costume Art, opens to the public on May 10 and runs through January 10, 2027.

Costume Art is positioned as a structural shift for the department as much as a theme. It inaugurates the Costume Institute’s new, nearly 12,000 square foot Condé M. Nast Galleries adjacent to the museum’s Great Hall, bringing the Institute into a central, permanent footprint at The Met Fifth Avenue.

Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show pairs garments with paintings, sculpture, and other works across the museum, framing the dressed body as a through line rather than a category. Reporting around the announcement describes an exhibition built from nearly 400 objects shown in pairings, designed to track how clothing has both shaped and been shaped by visual culture over long spans of art history.

For the gala itself, the co chairs are confirmed as Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour. Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz are leading the host committee, which has been announced with a mix of fashion, film, music, and contemporary art names.

Fashion Is Art is not a narrow prompt and that is the point. It invites attendees to treat silhouette, construction, material, and reference as the language of the night, with space for literal art citations as well as rigorously modern work that reads as formal research into the body. In other words, the brief is less about costume and more about method, how design makes meaning when it is worn.