Met Gala 2026 Theme: Fashion is Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has unveiled the dress code for its 2026 Met Gala, set for May 4, as "Fashion is Art," inviting attendees to explore the human body as a canvas for creative expression. The event, a major fundraiser for the museum's Costume Institute, coincides with the exhibition "Costume Art," which highlights the dressed body as a unifying element across the institution's collections.

Curator Andrew Bolton, who oversees the Costume Institute, described the theme's foundation in a statement. "What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body," Bolton said. "It's the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was." The dress code aims to provide context for the exhibition while allowing broad interpretations, encouraging designers and guests to draw from art history, movements like Renaissance or surrealism, and innovative forms such as trompe l'oeil or exaggerated silhouettes.

The exhibition, opening May 10, 2026, and running through January 10, 2027, will feature nearly 400 objects in the newly debuted Condé Nast Galleries, a...