The Met Gala Is Here—This Is Everything We Know About the Dress Code

The first Monday in May, fashion's Super Bowl, is finally here. It's the biggest night for the world's best dressed and our personal favorite as armchair critics. Sure, it's fun to walk the Met's carpeted steps, but it's equally thrilling to do so from your couch. (We speak from experience.) This morning, we hit up the Metropolitan Museum of Art to preview the exhibit, Costume Art, that tonight's Met Gala exists to celebrate (and raise money for), which gave us plenty of insights about the dress code, Fashion Is Art. Read on for more on our findings from last November's announcement, as well as this morning's preview.

What Is the Met Gala 2026 Exhibition Theme?

According to the museum's press release, "The show will examine the centrality of the dressed body, juxtaposing garments and works of art from across the Museum’s vast collection to create pairings that not only illuminate the indivisible connection between clothing and the body but also the complex interplay between artistic representations of the body and fashion as an embodied art form." It will be on view from May 10 to January 10. Today's top designers were featured, like Anthony Vaccarello's Saint Laurent and Matthieu Blazy's Chanel, as were artists from the past, like Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen. Expect corsets, naked dresses, and so much more!

What Is the Met Gala 2026 Dress Code?

The exhibit and the dress code are never identical, but the latter is meant to complement what's on view at the museum. Invited guests, like Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, and Emma Chamberlain, were told to "express their own relationship to fashion as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless depictions of the dressed body throughout art history." We are predicting quite a bit of Comme des Garçons spring 1997 Lumps and Bumps collection, which was present at the preview and then some.