The countdown for the Met Gala 2026 is officially on, and we are finally getting some intel about the exhibition surrounding the highly anticipated fashion event.
Widely referred to as fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala is an annual fundraiser event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Every year, fashion enthusiasts from around the world tune in to see celebrities, artists, and fashion insiders arrive at the prestigious dinner, gracing the iconic stairs of the Met Museum, donning some of the most coveted sartorial creations, each year inspired by and honoring the exhibition’s theme.
On November 17, 2025, Vogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the theme of the 2026 exhibition, which will serve as the guiding thread for the Met Gala, marking the beginning of the countdown to May.
Below, find out everything we know so far about the 2026 Met Gala and The Costume Institute’s newest exhibition. Continue reading for the full details, or skip to your preferred section using the menu below.
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When is the Met Gala 2026 taking place?
Unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as in 2021, the Met Gala typically takes place on the first Monday in May every year. Doing some basic calculations, that means the Met Gala 2026 will take place on Monday, May 4, 2026.
What is the Met Gala 2026 theme?
On November 17, 2025, Vogue announced the title for the Costume Institute’s 2026 exhibition, which the Met Gala 2026 will benefit, is “Costume Art.” According to curator Andrew Bolton, the exhibition is inspired by “the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection.”
The upcoming exhibition will mark the inauguration of nearly 12,000 square feet of the Condé M. Nast Galleries, a fashion-first permanent space located adjacent to The Met’s Great Hall. The collection will feature “paintings, sculptures, and other objects spanning the 5,000 years of art represented in The Met, alongside historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute.”
“What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body,” Bolton told Vogue. “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.”
What’s new about the 2026 Met Gala theme? Well, it’s Bolton’s first exhibition theme ever without a subtitle. Although the theme originally had a secondary part to complement the main title, Bolton and his team ultimately decided to remove it.
“We took it out and it was like taking off a corset,” Bolton said. “I thought, this is exactly what it should be. It’s bold, it’s strong, it’s a statement of intent. [The goal] is not to create a new hierarchy. It’s just to disband that hierarchy and to focus on equivalency — equivalency of artworks and equivalency of bodies.”
What is the Met Gala 2026 Dress Code?
Vogue traditionally announces the dress code a few months after the theme is revealed, so stay tuned for more information on how the 2026 Met Gala dress code relates to the “Costume Art” theme soon.
For reference, Vogue announced the official dress code for the 2025 Met Gala on February 4, 2025, just shy of four months after the theme was unveiled. While the exhibition theme was “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the dress code was “Tailored for You.”
