Beyoncé returns as co-chair of Met Gala 2026

NEW YORK (AP):

The new Met Gala co-chairs have been announced, revealing a powerhouse quartet. Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman will join Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour in hosting the star-studded event next May. This marks Williams’ first time as co-chair, seven years after her sister Serena held the role. Beyoncé previously served as honorary chair in 2013, while Kidman co-chaired in 2003 and 2005.

Wintour continues to oversee the annual fundraiser, which brought in a record US$31 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute last year.

The museum on Wednesday also announced a gala host committee, chaired by designer Anthony Vaccarello and filmmaker Zoë Kravitz. It includes 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.

For years, Beyoncé, a seven-time gala guest, has been one of the most-watched celebrities on the carpet, keeping everyone in eager anticipation of her fashionably late arrival. In 2015, she made it worth the wait with a daring custom Givenchy gown that, with its strategically placed beading, gave new meaning to the term “sheer” and heralded the ubiquity of the naked dress trend. A year later, the superstar again wore Givenchy, this time in a gleaming, skintight latex gown.

No word on what she will wear next; the dress code for the May 4 gala has yet to be announced. But it will dovetail with the theme of ‘Costume Art’, announced last month as the institute’s next spring exhibit.

The exhibit aims to celebrate “the dressed body” as it appears in art through the centuries. It will do that by pairing garments with objects from across the museum to show how fashion has long been intertwined with different 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’, for example, but also less traditional themes like the ‘Pregnant Body’ and the ‘Ageing Body’.

The new exhibit will also have a splashy new home. Costume Art will inaugurate new gallery space occupying some 12,000 square feet (1,115 square metres), right off the museum’s Great Hall, giving fashion a prominent space in the museum and also helping to control congestion at the heavily attended exhibits. The new Conde M. Nast galleries – created from what was formerly the museum’s retail store – will house not only all spring Costume Institute exhibits, but other shows from different parts 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 age 45 after nearly one and a half years away from the tour, though she had never retired. She became the oldest player to play singles at the US Open since 1981. Serena Williams, meanwhile, recently threw cold water on the idea that she might be preparing to return to tennis.

Costume Art opens to the public on May 10 and runs until January 10, 2027.