The co-chairs of the Met Gala, which is held every year on the first Monday in May in New York City, have been announced as Beyoncé, Venus Williams, Nicole Kidman and, of course, Anna Wintour.
Otherwise known as “fashion’s biggest night out” or “the Superbowl of fashion”, it will be Beyoncé’s first time in attendance since 2016, when she wore Givenchy to attend a Met Gala themed Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology.
The role of the co-chairs is to oversee everything from interior design to catering to guest list, as well as hosting, possibly performing and, crucially, dressing to hit the brief. Past co-chairs have included everyone from Zendaya to Harry Styles, Rihanna to Donatella Versace and Lin-Manuel Miranda to Sarah Jessica Parker.
This year’s co-chairs will be presiding over a Met Gala themed around Costume Art, to tie in with the Costume Institute’s spring 2026 exhibition. Announced last month, the exhibition, which will be on view to the public from 10 May, aims to explore the body and fashion in art by pairing paintings, sculptures and other objects from the Met’s collection with 200 historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute: a 16th century painting of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Düre with an ensemble by Belgian-designer Walter Van Beirendonck, say; or a photograph of a body called La Poupeé with a Rei Kawakubo creation for Comme des Garçons.
As curator Andrew Bolton said in a press release at the time: “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 artform.”
The exhibition will be organised into a series of thematic body types, including the naked body, the anatomical body, the aging body and the pregnant body. It will be the first exhibition at the Costume Institute’s new permanent galleries at the Met: the new, nearly 10,000ft Condé M Nast Galleries have been named for the company’s late founder.
The exhibition’s theme, which is famously interpreted, sometimes to spectacular effect, by stylists and celebrities, is likely to inspire some interesting outfits at the Gala. It seems likely that there will be takes on naked dressing, musings on mannequins and celebrations of physicality, not least from the newly announced co-chairs. The Met has in the past famously hosted Rihanna in her so-called “omelette dress” and Diana Ross in a train so long it needed two assistants.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos were also recently announced as the main sponsors for 2026’s Met Gala, marking a deeper push into the fashion world and drawing criticism on social media.
Anthony Vaccarello, creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, and the actor Zoë Kravitz will co-chair the Met Gala host committee, with additional members including Doja Cat, Sabrina Carpenter, Gwendoline Christie, Lena Dunham and Wintour’s successor at Vogue, Chloe Malle.
