Met Gala

The Met Gala, formally called the Costume Institute Benefit, is the annual haute couture fundraising festival held at and for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute on the Museum Mile of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The Met Gala is popularly regarded as the world's most prestigious and glamorous event in fashion, where fame, wealth, power, social influence, and spectacle collide and peak simultaneously. Attendees are given the opportunity to express themselves through fashion, often producing elaborate and highly publicized outfits inspired by the evening's theme and broader cultural context. The event is organized by the fashion and glamor magazine Vogue and is known as "fashion's biggest night", where "haute couture intersects with history to create the ultimate cultural moment – all in the name of art". Known as "the world's most exclusive party", an invitation is highly sought after. Invitees to attend the Met Gala in a given year are typically personalities widely perceived to be culturally relevant to contemporary society at the world's crossroads of various professional spheres, including fashion, digital and social media, tech, music, Broadway, Wall Street, film, television, sports, and politics. The Gala is held annually on the first Monday of May, which marks the opening of the Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibit hosted on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Many of the attendees are depicted on the covers and pages of Vogue. Each year's event celebrates the specific theme of that year's Costume Institute exhibition, which sets the tone for the formal attire of the night. Guests are expected to curate their fashions to match the theme of the annual exhibit, generally in haute couture. Fashion executive Anna Wintour, who was the editor-in-chief of Vogue, has chaired or co-chaired the Met Gala since 1995, except for the 1996 Met Gala, which was chaired by Wintour's successor at British Vogue, Liz Tilberis, who attended with her friend Diana, Princess of Wales. Over time, the Met Gala has evolved beyond the New York fashion epicenter to become increasingly global and diverse in its perspective and scope. The entry price for one ticket to attend the Met Gala rose to US$100,000 in 2026, up from $75,000 in 2025, which in turn had reflected an increase from $50,000 in 2023, to attend the annual gala in New York City. In 2023, software company Launchmetrics found that the Met Gala generated nearly double the "media impact value" (the monetary value of publicity generated) for brands than the Super Bowl, at US$995 million. In 2024, the Met Gala's figure rose to $1 billion. The Met Gala is progressively expanding its reach to represent celebrities and designers from all six inhabited continents.