Met Gala 2026: Beyoncé returns after 10 years, will co-chair fashion's biggest night with Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, Anna Wintour

The world’s most-watched red-carpet event is gearing up for one of its starriest editions yet. The 2026 Met Gala, celebrating the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring Costume Institute exhibition 'Costume Art', has unveiled a powerhouse line-up of co-chairs that reads like a cross-industry dream team with Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour.For fashion lovers, this year comes with a major headline: Beyoncé is returning to the Met Gala for the first time in a decade. Her last appearance was in 2016’s Manus x Machina, where she stunned in Givenchy Haute Couture. Fans have been waiting ever since for Queen Bey’s comeback to fashion’s biggest stage.

A crossroads of entertainment, fashion and sport

Joining Beyoncé are two Met Gala regulars: Nicole Kidman, who has become a fixture of the gala’s modern aesthetic, most recently in sculptural Balenciaga at the 2025 “Superfine” Gala and Venus Williams, who continues to infuse sport into high fashion.

At the 2025 event, she hit the red carpet in a Lacoste custom tennis-skirt-meets-evening-cape creation.

A star-packed host committee

As if the co-chair line-up was not enough, the 2026 Host Committee is equally stacked. Leading it are Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s creative director, and Zoë Kravitz, with a constellation of names supporting them:

More are yet to be announced. It is a line-up designed to pull in pop culture from every possible corner of music, film, sports, the arts and turn the Met steps into a global runway for cultural influence.

Inside costume art: The exhibition behind the gala

Curated by Andrew Bolton, Costume Art examines the intimate relationship between clothing and the human body, not just how fashion looks but how it lives, moves, stretches, ages and transforms with us. The exhibition is structured around thematic body types, including:

It will span historical garments, contemporary fashion and centuries of visual culture and for the first time, a Costume Institute exhibition will debut inside the Met’s new Condé M.

Nast Galleries. It is a vast 12,000-square-foot space beside the Great Hall.

Bolton explained the vision in a statement, “I wanted to focus on the centrality of the dressed body… ‘Costume Art’ privileges materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.”The exhibition opens to the public May 10, 2026, and runs through January 10, 2027.

Why this Met Gala matters

The Met Gala is the Costume Institute’s biggest annual fundraiser, supporting exhibitions, acquisitions and curatorial work but culturally, it is something more - a global stage where fashion, celebrity and art collide.

This year, all signs point to a monumental moment - Beyoncé’s return will dominate headlines and set the tone for the night.Kidman, Williams and Wintour bring decades of fashion authority. A star-studded committee ensures one of the most eclectic guest lists in years while a theme rooted in the body itself promises boundary-pushing couture.The dress code, arguably the most anticipated detail, will be revealed soon. If this year’s co-chairs are any indication, expect a red carpet where fashion is not just worn but embodied.