The new Met Gala co-chairs have been announced, and it's a high-powered quartet: Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman will join Vogue's Anna Wintour in hosting the star-studded event next May.
Williams, who has never hosted before, takes on the role seven years after her younger sister and fellow tennis champion, Serena, served as co-chair. Beyoncé was an honorary chair in 2013, and Kidman co-chaired in 2003 and 2005. Wintour, of course, oversees the annual event - a fundraiser that last year brought a record $31 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
The museum on Wednesday also announced a gala host committee, chaired by designer Anthony Vaccarello and filmmaker Zoe Kravitz, and including musicians Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, LISA, Sam Smith and Yseult; dancer Misty Copeland; actors Teyana Taylor, Elizabeth Debicki, Gwendoline Christie and Lena Dunham; basketball player A'ja Wilson; models Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser and Lauren Wasser; Vogue editor Chloe Malle; and artist Anna Weyant.
Yet to be announced is the dress code for the May 4 gala, though it will dovetail with the theme of "Costume Art," revealed last month as the institute's next spring exhibition.
The exhibition aims to celebrate "the dressed body" as it appears in art across the centuries. It will do this by pairing garments with objects from across the museum to show how fashion has long been intertwined with a variety of art forms.
"It's a show that can really live in fascinating ways at the museum and can pull from all different areas of our collection - paintings, sculpture, drawings," the museum's CEO and director, Max Hollein, said in an interview last month.
The show, overseen as always by the Costume Institute's curator in charge, Andrew Bolton, will be organised thematically by different body types. It will include the "Naked Body" and the "Classical Body", as well as less traditional themes such as the "Pregnant Body" and the "Aging Body".
The new exhibition will also have a striking new home. "Costume Art" will inaugurate new gallery space occupying some 12,000 square feet (1,115 square metres), just off the museum's Great Hall - giving fashion a prominent space in the museum while also helping to ease congestion at the heavily attended exhibitions. The new Conde M. Nast Galleries - created from what was formerly the museum's retail store - will house not only all spring Costume Institute exhibitions but also other shows from different departments of the museum.
Bolton has said the gallery space "will mark a pivotal moment for the department, one that acknowledges the critical role fashion plays not only within art history but also within contemporary culture."
Venus Williams returned to competition in July at the age of 45 after nearly a year and a half away from the tour, though she had never formally retired. She became the oldest player to compete in singles at the US Open since 1981. Serena Williams, meanwhile, recently dismissed speculation that she might be preparing for a return to tennis.
"Costume Art" opens to the public on May 10, 2026, and runs until January 10, 2027.
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