The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Gala turned New York into a velvet-rope showcase for wealth and cultural gatekeeping Monday night, with the museum announcing a record $42 million haul from an event built around the dress code “Fashion is Art.” The money, up from last year’s record of $31 million, flowed through Anna Wintour’s long-running benefit for the Costume Institute, where hundreds of stars were invited to perform their interpretations of art while the institution counted the cash.
Who Gets to Enter
The gala took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on May 4, 2026, with co-hosts Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams joining Anna Wintour, who remained the longtime chair of the event. The museum tied the dress code to the exhibition “Costume Art” at the Met’s Costume Institute, turning the night into a highly managed display of access, status and spectacle.
Before the event, the museum announced that this year’s gala raised a record $42 million, a figure that dwarfed last year’s record of $31 million. The event’s fundraising milestone sat at the center of the evening, even as the red carpet was framed as a celebration of creativity. The Washington Post described the gala as Anna Wintour’s annual benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Benefit, with luminaries from entertainment, sports and fashion congregating in outré looks, many inspired by works of art.
The Curated Pageant
The museum created a garden-like setting with romantic hanging florals, barriers of green hedges, pots of lavender and a carpet resembling mossy bricks. The scene was engineered to look organic, but every inch was controlled by the institution hosting the spectacle. Hundreds of stars attended and offered different interpretations of the dress code, each look folded into the museum’s branding of art, fashion and elite access.
Beyoncé returned to the event after a decade-long hiatus in a glittering skeleton gown by Olivier Rousteing and brought her daughter Blue Ivy for her Met Gala debut. Venus Williams wore a Swarovski gown inspired by a portrait of her by Robert Pruitt that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Lauren Sánchez Bezos wore a Schiaparelli gown riffing off John Singer Sargent’s painting “Portrait of Madame X.”
Other looks highlighted anatomy, art history and theatricality. Lisa wore a Robert Wun-designed white veiled gown with extra pairs of arms. Heidi Klum disguised herself as a living statue. Bad Bunny said on the red carpet, “I always try to do something different,” and joked that it took “53 years” to create his look. Lena Dunham wore a Valentino dress inspired by Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Beheading Holofernes.” Emma Chamberlain wore a hand-painted custom Mugler gown that flowed into deep watery blues. Nicole Kidman and daughter Sunday Rose Kidman Urban both wore volume and texture, with Chanel and Dior, respectively.
The Machine Behind the Glamour
The coverage also noted looks from Rihanna and A$AP Rocky arriving at the Met Gala, Kylie Jenner in a Schiaparelli illusion dress with 10,000 pearls and 11,000 hours of embroidery work, and Cara Delevingne in a high-neck velvet Ralph Lauren column dress with 10,000 hand-embroidered crystals. Doja Cat wore a draped gown from Saint Laurent and said she was inspired by her own skin tone from head to toe. The event’s language of artistry and individuality sat alongside the labor, branding and luxury houses that made the spectacle possible.
USA Today said the Met Gala livestream was hosted exclusively by Vogue on its website and digital platforms, with Ashley Graham, La La Anthony and Cara Delevingne as hosts beginning at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT. E! aired its own red-carpet special from 6 to 9 p.m. ET/3 to 6 p.m. PT, with a separate livestream beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. PT. The media apparatus extended the event far beyond the museum walls, packaging the night for mass consumption while the institution and its partners controlled the frame.
USA Today also said Vogue announced designer Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz would co-chair the Met Gala Host Committee for 2026, with members including Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, Gwendoline Christie, Misty Copeland, Elizabeth Debicki, Lena Dunham, Lisa, Sam Smith and Teyana Taylor. The guest list, the hosts, the livestreams and the fundraising all pointed to the same hierarchy: a closed system where culture, money and prestige circulate upward, while everyone else is left watching the pageant from outside the rope.