Met Gala 2026 theme hint revealed as Costume Institute announces spring exhibition
We're one step closer to learning the Met Gala theme for 2026. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute announced its spring exhibition Monday, which typically inspires the dress code for the evening.
The spring 2026 exhibition is titled "Costume Art." It opens May 10, 2026 to January 10, 2027, following the Met Gala on May 4, 2026.
This year, the Met Gala exhibition and benefit "are made possible by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos," the Met said in its announcement.
"Costume Art will present a dynamic and scholarly conversation between garments from The Costume Institute and an array of artworks from across The Met's vast collection, elevating universal and timeless themes while bringing forward new ideas and ways of seeing. This immensely creative and collaborative exhibition will demonstrate the Museum's innovative and forward-thinking approach to presenting Costume Institute exhibitions, and will highlight The Met's unique ability to position fashion within the context of more than 5,000 years of art represented in its collection," Museum director and CEO Max Hollein said.
"For The Costume Institute's inaugural exhibition in the Condé M. Nast Galleries, 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. Rather than prioritizing fashion's visuality, which often comes at the expense of the corporeal, Costume Art privileges its materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear," Curator Andrew Bolton said.
Bolton said the exhibition will pair objects, sculptures and paintings from the museum with garments from the Costume Institute.
"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," Bolton said in an interview with Vogue. "It's always inscribed with cultural values and ideas."
He adds the exhibition will be organized around different body types, like the classical and nude body, other bodies that can be overlooked like aging bodies or pregnant bodies, and the anatomical body.
"The idea was to put the body back into discussions about art and fashion, and to embrace the body, not to take it away as a way of elevating fashion to an art form," he told Vogue.
The spring exhibition marks the inauguration of the Condé M. Nast Galleries, which sits adjacent to The Met's Great Hall. The mannequins -- some with mirrored heads -- will sit atop 6-foot pedestals, immediately drawing the eye up, Bolton says.
Last year's Costume Institute exhibition was called, "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style," and the accompanying dress code was "Tailored for You."