The Metropolitan Museum of Art has officially unveiled the theme for the 2026 Met Gala which is “Costume Art”, a tribute to the timeless relationship between fashion, the body, and artistic expression. The exhibition will inaugurate the museum’s newly built Condé M. Nast Galleries, a 12,000-square-foot permanent space beside The Met’s Great Hall.
Often regarded as fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala raises annual funds for the museum’s Costume Institute. In keeping with tradition, the gala’s theme mirrors the institute’s spring exhibition. This year, curator Andrew Bolton is taking a pared-down, boundary-breaking approach.
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Fashion as a living art form
In an interview with Vogue, Bolton explained that Costume Art highlights how the “dressed body” connects every department across the museum’s 5,000-year collection. The exhibition will place garments both historic and contemporary, alongside sculptures, paintings, and artefacts to show how clothing shapes cultural meaning.
“What connects every gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body,” Bolton said. “Even the nude is never naked. It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”
He added that fashion is inseparable from experience: “It has an edge on art because it is about one’s lived, embodied experience.”
A theme without subtitles
Bolton dropped the traditional explanatory subtitles that usually accompany Met exhibitions.
“We took it out and it was like taking off a corset,” he said. The decision, he noted, aims to remove hierarchy between art and clothing and emphasise their equal cultural weight.
The exhibition will showcase pieces such as a Greek terracotta statuette of Nike from the late 5th century BCE alongside the iconic “Delphos” gown by Fortuny which is a pairing meant to spotlight how form, structure, and drapery speak across time.
The Met Gala will take place on May 4, 2026, staying true to its tradition of being held on the first Monday of May.
What about the red-carpet dress code?
The theme Costume Art sets the intellectual tone for the exhibition, but the Met has not yet revealed the 2026 dress code. Historically, the gala theme and dress code don’t always align.
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In 2025, for example, the exhibition Superfine: Tailoring Black Style had a separate red carpet dress code titled Tailored for You.
The museum has also not announced the celebrity co-chairs or the dress code for 2026. Last year’s panel included Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, LeBron James (honorary chair), and long-time Met Gala steward Anna Wintour.
More details on this year’s co-chairs and dress code are expected in the coming months.
