The Met Gala 2026 took over the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday, May 4, drawing around 450 well-heeled guests and putting Nicole Kidman among the expected stars on the steps. Vanity Fair planned to begin its live coverage around 6 p.m. ET, with correspondents, writers, editors and experts set to track arrivals behind the scenes.
This year’s dress code was Fashion Is Art, tied to the spring exhibition Costume Art, which the Met said would pair garments with artworks to reveal the inherent relationship between clothing and the body. That framing put a sharper focus on the night than celebrity spectacle alone, even as Beyoncé, Sabrina Carpenter, Hudson Williams, Kylie Jenner and Zoë Kravitz were listed among the other expected names.
Money, as always, helped set the tone. Jen Rubio and Stewart Butterfield pledged to donate $23 million to the Met, a figure that underscored how the gala functions not just as a red carpet event but as an ultra-exclusive fundraiser that pulls in figures from fashion, entertainment, politics, technology, media and sports. The exhibition and the guest list were built to feed each other: the art on the walls, the clothing on the stairs and the people choosing both.
Some of the early arrivals already showed how the theme could land in different ways. Chase Sui Wonders arrived in a lavender asymmetrical McQueen gown with a massive bow on her right shoulder, while Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his girlfriend Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto came in matching shades of blue. Brin also appeared to be wearing a pin bearing Iran’s pre-revolutionary flag, a small detail that stood out against the formal symmetry of the night.
Venus Williams, one of the co-chairs, arrived in custom Swarovski and said the look was inspired by her portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. She called it a comfortable dress. Morgan Spector took a different tack, saying the inspiration behind his Tom Ford look was “just Haider Ackermann.” And artist Amy Sherald was fitting a Thom Browne dress she would wear Monday night, part of a collaboration with the designer based on her painting Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance).
For Kidman, the night also landed amid a run of public projects and appearances that have kept her name in the entertainment conversation, from the renewed Scarpetta series to the first Practical Magic 2 teaser featuring Sandra Bullock and Kidman, and even coverage of her daughter Sunday Rose’s silver gown photo. At the Met, though, the point was simpler: she was one of the faces the crowd had come to see, on a night designed to make clothing read as art and art read through clothing.
