Met Gala 2026 date, theme, dress code and hosts: Everything you need to know

ICYMI, the Met Gala 2026 is right around the corner. This Monday, 4th May, the fashion pack will make their way down one of the world’s most famous red carpets to showcase their stylistic interpretations of this year’s theme, while the world watches on.

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 honouring 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.

On February 23, 2026, they announced the dress code and even more juicy details.

Below, find out everything we know so far about this Monday’s Met Gala 2026. Continue reading for the full details, or skip to your preferred section using the menu below.

When is the Met Gala 2026 taking place?

So soon — the Met Gala 2026 will take place on Monday, May 4, 2026.

What is the Met Gala 2026 theme?

Last year, Vogue announced the Met Gala 2026 theme is “Costume Art.” According to curator Andrew Bolton, the 2026 Met Gala theme 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.”

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“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 centre 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 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. Will removing the extra added context result in more original and outlandish looks? That remains to be seen.

For Bolton, it was about simplifying the message: “We took it out and it was like taking off a corset,” he 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?

While the theme is “Costume Art,” there is always a separate dress code to guide the incredible fashion we can expect to witness at the Met Gala. This year’s Met Gala dress code is “Fashion Is Art.”