The 2026 Met Gala dress code is as abstract as it gets

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just announced the dress code for its annual Costume Institute Benefit (yes, it’s a charity event, not just a reason to dress up) and it’s deceptively simple—or painfully complex, depending on how you look at it: ‘Fashion is Art’.

When is the Met Gala this year?

The event takes place on the first Monday of May; this year, that’s Monday, May 4, 2026.

Who will attend the 2026 Met Gala?

While the guest list, as always, is under lock and key, we can assume Beyoncé will be returning to Fashion’s Biggest Night after a decade since she’s sharing co-chair duties with Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Condé Nast chief Anna Wintour.

The gala’s host committee, co-chaired by Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello and actor Zoë Kravitz (a Saint Laurent brand ambassador), includes notable names like Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Blackpink’s Lisa, Sam Smith, and Teyana Taylor. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, along with being the lead sponsors for the gala and exhibition, are also honorary chairs for the evening.

What’s the dress code?

The dress code for this year’s Met Gala is ‘Fashion is Art’. As art is subjective, that leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

For those inclined to take the theme quite literally, designers have been translating great artworks into wearable forms for decades. Take, for example, Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic Mondrian cocktail dress inspired by the Dutch Neoplasticism movement; Andy Warhol’s pop-art prints splashed across collections at Versace, Prada, and Moschino; or Rodarte’s spring 2012 collection based entirely on Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Vase with Twelve Sunflowers’. If the idea is to literally come dressed as an artwork, might we suggest a look from Viktor & Rolf’s couture autumn/winter 2015 show, which had canvases and frames wrapped around the body as dresses?

Some designers bring fashion and art together in more subtle ways—through clothing that transforms the body, blurring the lines between model and creation. Like Gaurav Gupta’s Divinity breastplate in his latest couture offering, which drew from ancient sculpture, or Daniel Roseberry’s anatomical designs at Schiaparelli that are both ornament and organ. If elements are on one’s mind, Rahul Mishra’s new couture collection, which offers painterly visions of waves and flames, would fit the bill. And of course, anything by Dutch designer Iris van Herpen automatically qualifies as art.

I’d also place a wager on a performance art unravelling on the carpet. Remember Lady Gaga’s four-part outfit transformation and Billy Porter’s dramatic “sun god” entrance from 2019?

What about the exhibition?

The Met Gala is, of course, held to announce the opening of the Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition. The show this year is titled Costume Art; it will be the first exhibition in the new Condé M Nast galleries of the museum and will examine what it calls “the centrality of the dressed body”.

Think artworks and garments that explore the relationship between the clothing and the body, as well as fashion as an embodied art form. “Rather than prioritising 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,” curator in charge Andrew Bolton said in a statement.

The exhibition will be on view at The Met, Fifth Avenue, New York, from May 10, 2026, through January 10, 2027