Met Gala 2026 Red Carpet Arrivals: See All the Looks Live

Reported by Vogue.

The steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art are doing the most tonight. The 2026 Met Gala is underway, and the theme isn't just a mood board — it's a statement. Co-chairs Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams are leading the charge into what might be fashion's most intellectually ambitious evening in years.

According to Vogue, this year's exhibit, Costume Art, is the anchor: a sprawling installation running from May 10, 2026 through January 10, 2027 inside the museum's brand-new, nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries. Hundreds of works place the dressed body at the center of fine art conversation — and the dress code, "Fashion is Art," asks guests to embody that argument in real time. Not a suggestion. A brief.

A Canvas, Not a Costume

The exhibit's internal chapters are where things get interesting. Sub-themes spanning Hellenistic drapery, anatomical study, and the nude body give attendees a framework — and given fashion's current obsession with naked dressing, expect more than a few guests to push that particular boundary as far as a museum steps will allow. The best Met looks have always been conceptual arguments wearing sequins, and this theme finally makes that explicit.

The host committee reads like a cultural cross-section done right: Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz serving as co-chairs alongside a guest list that includes Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Alex Consani, Lena Dunham, Paloma Elsesser, Lisa, Teyana Taylor, Lauren Wasser, A'ja Wilson, and Yseult. The range alone signals that Costume Art isn't interested in a single, monolithic vision of what fashion-as-art looks like — and neither, apparently, are its attendees.

Tonight isn't about who wore it best. It's about who understood the assignment well enough to make you think.

Read the original at Vogue.