What Was The Met Gala Theme This Year? Here’s What ‘Fashion Is Art’ Means, Dress Code Explained

Met Gala 2026 Theme: The 2026 Met Gala is an eye-popping show of sartorial extravagance, bringing together luminaries in the worlds of art, fashion, and entertainment. Every year on the first Monday in May, the Met Gala raises funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is proving to be again one of the most star-studded events of the year, and this year is not going to be any different. The event will be hosted and co-chaired by Condé Nast Chief Content Officer Anna Wintour with Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams.

Met Gala 2026 Theme Explained

This year, visitors are following the lead of the Costume Art show that is replacing the Costume Institute at the Met Gala this spring. The dress code in the meantime is ‘Fashion Is Art.’ 

Why ‘Fashion Is Art’ Gives Celebrities Creative Freedom

The theme of the Met Gala 2026 is “Costume Art,” and is also the title of the spring 2026 exhibition at the Met. It seeks to explore the representations of the dressed body throughout the vast collection of the Met, as well as how clothing and body are inherently related to each other.

The exhibition is also the opening of the first permanent galleries of the Costume Institute, which will be unveiled over almost 12,000 square feet.

Met Gala 2026: How ‘Costume Art’ Blurs The Line Between Fashion, Body, And Fine Art

Andrew Bolton, the curator in charge at the Institute, told Vogue in November 2025: What connects all the curatorial departments and what connects all the individual galleries of the museum is fashion, or the dressed body. “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 centre in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked. It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”

This interest in bodies as it relates to art will take many forms, with pieces of art in the company of a variety of body types. He said that the idea was to get the body back into the discussion about art and fashion, and to embrace the body, not to take it away as a way of elevating fashion to an art form.

The theme of last year was: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. In 2024, the title was “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”

The 2026 Met Gala dress code is “Fashion Is Art” which, let’s be real, is about as open-ended as it gets. Last year was “Tailored For You,” and in 2024 it was “The Garden of Time,” but this one? This is giving designers an excuse to go wild. The official word from the Met is that guests should show off their own take on fashion as art and really embrace the history of how bodies have been shown in art over the years. 

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