The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced the concept for this year’s highly anticipated ball. The theme of the Met Gala 2026 is Fashion Is Art, and the accompanying exhibition, Costume Art, will explore clothing not just as something you wear, but as its own artistic form that’s closely tied to the human body.
The folks behind the Met Gala have announced this year’s theme: “Fashion Is Art.” The ball will kick off the Costume Institute’s exhibition, Costume Art, which will showcase clothing as its own form of art. Vogue reported this.
The museum says that this dress code encourages guests to “show off their own sense of fashion as a form of art and to enjoy all the different ways the clothed body has been depicted in art history.”
The exhibition will combine fashion with paintings and sculptures from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection. The Costume Institute’s Andrew Bolton said the project looks at how clothes have influenced how people see bodies and social status in different times.
The exhibition will feature historical costumes and works of art from the museum’s collection. The exhibition will be divided into several main sub-themes: “The Naked Body,” “The Classical Body,” “The Abstract Body,” and “The Pregnant Body” are each going to have carefully selected exhibits.
“I wanted to focus on the clothed body in the museum, combining artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied form of art,” says Andrew Bolton. “Instead of focusing on how clothes look, which often means ignoring how they feel, Costume Art highlights the material side of things and the deep connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.”
The ball’s co-chairs are Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and, of course, Anna Wintour. The event is set for May 4 and is sponsored by Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez.
As part of the prep for the exhibition, a bunch of dresses by various talented designers were also shown — these pieces will likely be at the exhibition.