‘Fashion Is Art’: The 2026 Met Gala Dress Code Is Revealed  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced this week the dress code for its annual gala, which will celebrate the opening of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Costume Art.” In keeping with the theme, this year’s Met Gala fundraiser’s dress code is “Fashion is Art.” The event, co-chaired by Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour, will take place on May 4.

“Fashion is Art” invites guests to “express their own relationship to fashion as embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history.” The exhibition, which opens May 10, will feature nearly 400 objects from The Met collection that also capture artistic expression. The show will present fashion in dialogue with art, with works ranging from formal to conceptual, individual to universal, and more.

“For The Costume Institute’s inaugural exhibition in the Condé M. Nast Galleries, I wanted to focus on the centrality of the dressed body within the Museum, connecting artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form,” says Andrew Bolton, The Costume Institute’s Curator in Charge. “Rather than prioritizing fashion’s visuality, which often comes at the expense of the corporeal, ‘Costume Art’ privileges its materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear. The opening of the new Galleries will mark a pivotal moment for the department, one that acknowledges the critical role that fashion plays not only within art history but also within contemporary culture. I am grateful to Max for his support and to the generous donors to the Galleries for their belief in fashion’s transformative possibilities.”