Stars walk red carpet on fashion’s biggest night of the year

Chloe Mac Donnell

Hello and welcome to the Met Gala live blog 2026!

Chloe from the Guardian’s fashion desk here. My colleague Lauren and I are here to bring you all the best looks, the possible questionable looks and of course, what everyone is talking about from this year’s extravaganza.

For anyone unfamiliar with the event, a brief recap. For the fashion industry the Met Gala is the equivalent of Hollywood’s Oscars or the Super Bowl. It takes place every year on the first Monday in May to mark the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute latest exhibition. Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and chief content officer at publisher Condé Nast, is responsible for making the Met Gala what it is – namely the biggest party in fashion and a lucrative fundraiser for the Costume Institute.

This year it is even a bigger deal because it will also mark the opening of the Costume Institute’s new home – a 12,000-sq-ft space named the Condé M Nast Galleries after the publisher who made Vogue the fashion bible. Each year the exhibition has a specific theme. This year it is Costume Art which will explore “depictions of the dressed body across the Met’s vast collection, pairing garments with artworks to reveal the inherent relationship between clothing and the body”. You can read more about that here.

The theme of the gala always takes its lead from the exhibition but it is different to the exhibition (yes, we know this is confusing!). This year guests have been given the dress code “Fashion is Art.” The blurb explains this is a moment for attendees to “express their own relationship to fashion as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history”.

So what can we expect? Well, some celebrities now consider the body itself an art work so there could be a lot of naked dressing. You can imagine some guests might turn up holding an art work wearing something inspired by said art work. Remember in 1965 Yves Saint Laurent paid homage to Mondrian by creating a series of dresses inspired by his abstract canvases so you never know! Plus, the Met Gala has a reputation for people taking risks on the carpet. Jared Leto dressed as a cat in honour of Karl Lagerfeld in 2023, Katy Perry arrived as a glow-up chandelier for 2019’s Camp theme while Rihanna channeled the pope in a mitre for 2018’s Heavenly Bodies dress code.

As always it is set to be starry as Wintour appoints several co-chairs to assist her in overseeing the event. This year they include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams. As Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez have provided the majority of funding for both the exhibition and the gala, they have been given honorary chair titles. This has led to outrage from some activist groups. Our NYC readers may have already spotted anti-Bezos posters calling for a boycott of the gala placed near the museum and on the subway. There is also expected to be some kind of protest outside the event itself, so watch this space.

Meanwhile, some are rebranding it the “Tech Gala” thanks to several companies hoovering up tickets. At $100,000-ish a pop for an individual ticket (that’s up from $75,000 last year) and tables fetching upwards of $300,000, who else can afford them? Meta, Snapchat, OpenAI, ShopMy and of course, Amazon have all bought tables. Last year’s Met raised a record $31m, now we’re wondering if this year’s could smash that record?

It is important to note that even if you buy a table, you don’t have the final say on who will join you. Instead each guest needs to be approved personally by Wintour. She also suggests various names. While the guest list is not disclosed, we can expect to see appearances from the host committee, this year led by Saint Laurent’s Anthony Vaccarello and Zoe Kravitz alongside members Doja Cat, Sabrina Carpenter, Alex Consani, Misty Copeland, Teyana Taylor, A’ja Wilson, Chase Sui Wonder and Sam Smith. Plus would it even be a Met Gala without a Kardashian/Jenner or two, even three?

One person we won’t be seeing however, is New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Michael R Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams have all previously hotfooted it up the Met’s steps, but in an interview Mamdani said while he loved the Met his focus is “on affordability and making the most expensive city in the United States affordable, and that’s what I’m looking to spend a lot of my time focused on”. A wise move perhaps, considering the backlash Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got (and still continues to get) when she attended in ‘21 wearing a “Tax the Rich” dress.

Inside guests can expect a look around the exhibition followed by drinks, dinner and a surprise performance. Previous acts include Madonna and Rihanna, this year there are rumours of Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo and even Beyoncé.

OK, the first arrivals are beginning to trickle in. Apparently Wintour considers 10 minutes early, 10 minutes late – that explains the prompt start. Buckle up!