Beyoncé is set to make her return to the Met Gala after a decade away, hosting this year’s “Costume Art” exhibition event. Mike Coppola
With the 2026 Met Gala just two months away, it’s time to start imagining what the A-list crowd might wear to the annual ball.
Today, Vogue gave fans a clue, announcing the dress code: “Fashion is Art.”
The exhibition theme, “Costume Art,” was revealed in December and will be an examination of “the centrality of the dressed body,” further expanding on how the human form and the art of fashion have informed and influenced one another over generations.
The intention of a dress code is to give more context and elicit a wide range of interpretations of said theme.
The dress code for the 2026 Met Gala has been announced as “Fashion Is Art.” Design Pics Editorial/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The dress code, though up to interpretation, is meant to give guardrails for the fashion that will appear on the celebrity red carpet each year. Andrew H. Walker
Vogue explains, “the dress code encourages attendees to consider the many ways that designers use the body as their blank canvas.”
This might just be the most open-ended and abstract dress code yet, with curator Andrew Bolton saying vaguely, “What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body.”
With an instruction as ambiguous as this one, fashion worshipers are surely in for a treat when it comes to red carpet viewing.
The 2026 dress code is quite open-ended, meant to celebrate what “connects every single gallery in the museum.” voguemagazine/Instagram
Nicole Kidman, a longtime attendee, will also be a co-chair for this year’s event. Getty Images
This year will mark Beyoncé’s return to the event after a decade-long absence, acting as one of three co-chairs of the gala along with Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams.
Anna Wintour, though no longer the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, will also be a co-chair of the event as she has been for decades.
Along with benefit host committee co-chairs Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz, the host committee itself will also include the likes of Teyana Taylor, Sabrina Carpenter, Misty Copeland, Lena Dunham and 20 more.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos will also serve as honorary chairs as they are the lead sponsors of the event.
Zoë Kravitz, a fashion industry icon, will be one of the two benefit host committee co-chairs as well. Getty Images
This will mark Anna Wintour’s first Met Gala since stepping down as Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Magazine. Getty Images
The open-ended nature of both the exhibit’s theme as well as the overall dress code is due, in part, to the brand-new Condé M. Nast Galleries, which will open for the first time with the Costume Institute exhibit on the first Monday in May.
The exhibit will be made up of nearly 400 objects, including sculptures and paintings, placed around the newly opened gallery.
The Met Gala will take place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 4.