And the 2026 Met Gala Theme Is...

Even with the holiday season just around the corner—think Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s and everything else in between—there’s one event in the fashion world that reigns supreme: the Met Gala. It happens every May and while that is still six months away, the theme for next year has already been revealed.

Drumroll, please… the 2026 Met Gala theme is Costume Art.

“The theme of the 2026 @MetCostumeInstitute exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be ‘Costume Art,’” Vogue wrote in the caption of their November 17 announcement. “Announced today ahead of next year’s #MetGala, the show will mark the inauguration of the nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries, adjacent to The Met’s Great Hall.”

The exhibition itself is designed to celebrate the role of the dressed body throughout history.

“To mark the occasion, curator in charge Andrew Bolton has conceived an exhibition that addresses ‘the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection,’ by pairing paintings, sculptures, and other objects spanning the 5,000 years of art represented in the @metmuseum, alongside historical and contemporary garments from the Costume Institute,” the caption continued.

Bolton told Vogue, “What connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body. It’s the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was, this epiphany: I know that we’ve often been seen as the stepchild, but, in fact, the dressed body is front and center in every gallery you come across. Even the nude is never naked. It’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”