Who are the co-chairs and committee members?
Former US Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s name has become inextricable from the Met Gala since she first chaired the event in 1995. While she recently ascended to global head of content at Condé Nast, she has retained her gala duties, overseeing everything from the theme to the guests and what they wear.
This year, Wintour is joined by co-hosts Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Beyoncé, who also help shape the night’s tone – including the menu, performances, guest list and theme.
In addition to these anointed few, the Met Gala has a committee, which, somewhat confusingly, also has its own co-chairs. This year, Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello and actor Zoë Kravitz, a longtime ambassador of the fashion house, which is sponsoring the exhibition catalogue.
While the gala is the museum’s biggest fundraiser, it’s also a night that carries an enormous amount of cultural cachet – a priceless opportunity for brands to score points by dressing some of the world’s most famous people.
It’s Bezos’ world, we’re just living in it
Last year, Anna Wintour made us believe that she was handing the keys to the Vogue kingdom to journalist Chloe Malle when she stepped away from her role as editor of the magazine, but the real power play was just a click away.
When celebrities arrive for this year’s Met Gala, Vogue’s annual festival of fashion, their host won’t be Malle but honorary chairs, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos.
A look at the queues outside any luxury store, where the aesthetic is more Glassons than Gucci, shows that money can’t buy you taste. But for a reported $US10 million fee ($13.9 million) it has placed the Bezoses at the head table of an event once seen as the pinnacle of creative clothing expression.
Who are we expecting to attend?
Despite speculation that celebrities might boycott the Met Gala this year due to the Bezoses bank-rolling the affair, the guest list is flush with A-list names who couldn’t care less about a billionaire buyout.
Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams are the official co-chairs, making their appearance inevitable. Other Met regulars such as Kendall Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Gigi Hadid, Hailey Bieber and Karlie Kloss are all slated to attend again this year. Aussies such as actress Elizabeth Debicki, along with Anna Wintour’s BFF, director Baz Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer Catherine Martin, will also attend.
A most exciting attendee, however, is the third co-chair, Beyoncé, who hasn’t graced the Met with her presence in a decade. The last time she attended was in 2016, which capped off a five-year streak of the music mogul wearing Givenchy by Riccardo Tisci and generally saying “boy bye” to the dress code. Some fans are theorising Beyoncé’s decision to attend preludes an impending album release.
Her sister Solange is likely to join her in ascending the steps this year. Beyoncé’s other half, Jay-Z, is likely a safe bet also, though whether the three will end up in an elevator together is anyone’s guess…
Welcome to the Met Gala 2026!
Hello and welcome to one of the biggest days in the fashion calendar: the Met Gala. I’ll save you any The Devil Wears Prada references (the less said about that sequel, the better).
The brainchild of former Vogue editor-in-chief turned global chief content officer of Condé Nast, Anna Wintour, the Met Gala serves as the annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. This year, it’s also a quasi-vanity project for Jeff and Lauren Sanchez Bezos, the lead sponsors and “honorary co-chairs”.
The theme for the 2026 edition is “Costume Art”, taken from the name of the corresponding exhibition. “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 art form,” curator Andrew Bolton said of the show, which will feature 400 outfits and objects spanning 5000 years.
The dress code for the gala is “Fashion Is Art”. Guests have been encouraged to explore the concept of fashion as an embodied art form, and consider how designers have used the body as a canvas.
You can watch the live stream on the Vogue YouTube or TikTok channels, where red carpet hosts Emma Chamberlain, Ashley Graham, Lala Anthony and Cara Delevingne will be chatting to the celebrities as they roll in. And we’ll be live-blogging all the action for you right here! Stay tuned (and steer clear of fashion road kill).
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
