Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams to co-chair 2026 Met Gala

Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams will join Anna Wintour as co-chairs of the 2026 Met Gala, bringing their renown as style icons to the biggest night in fashion.

Next year’s gala, happening May 4, will mark Queen Bey’s return to the Costume Institute benefit for the first time since 2016. The entertainer started attending Met Galas in 2008 and served as an honorary chair in 2013, when the event was punk-themed. In her recent appearances, she wore Givenchy dresses – including the Diana Ross-inspired black gown she wore in 2014 and a see-through dress adorned with pastel crystals she paired with a high ponytail in 2015.

But she took an informal hiatus from the Met Ball beginning in 2017, when she was pregnant with twins Rumi and Sir. In subsequent years, she opted for vacations and rested before embarking on concert tours. She couldn’t attend this year’s Met Gala because she was just starting her Cowboy Carter Tour. (Perhaps Beyoncé’s Met Gala look will finally satiate the Beyhive’s desire for “visuals,” after the megastar skipped out on releasing music videos for her “Renaissance” and “Cowboy Carter” albums.)

Bey’s fellow co-chairs also experienced pivotal moments this year. Kidman filed for divorce from Keith Urban at the end of September after nearly 20 years of marriage. Next year will be Kidman’s third time as co-chair, after taking on the role in 2003 and 2005. Williams returned to the U.S. Open this year at age 45, making her the competition’s oldest competitor since 1981. She hasn’t co-chaired the Met Gala before, but her sister Serena did in 2019. And Wintour stepped down as American Vogue editor in chief this year after nearly 40 years. She’s still Vogue’s global editorial director and Condé Nast’s chief content officer.

Last month, the Met announced the gala’s 2026 theme: “Costume Art.” While the evening’s dress code has yet to be announced, many interpreted the theme to be teasing Met Gala’s critics, who have complained about how some attendees have badly blundered the dress codes of years past, with looks that veer closer to gimmicky and costumey than glamorous.

The Costume Institute’s exhibition will be divided into thematic body types such as “Naked Body,” “Aging Body” and “Pregnant Body,” which are meant to “highlight the inextricable relationship between clothing and the body and reveal that artistic representations of the body are shaped by the garments that clothe them and that the garments, in turn, are shaped by the bodies which they clothe,” according to a news release.

It will be the first exhibition in the new, almost 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries.

“I wanted to focus on the centrality of the dressed body within the Museum, connecting artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form,” Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton said in a statement. “Rather than prioritizing fashion’s visuality, which often comes at the expense of the corporeal, ‘Costume Art’ privileges its materiality and the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.”

Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello and Zoë Kravitz were tapped to co-chair the Met Gala host committee, a prominent group of celebrities who support the co-chairs. Already announced members include Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat, model Alex Consani, Misty Copeland, new Vogue head of editorial content Chloe Malle, Teyana Taylor, basketball player A’ja Wilson and French pop singer Yseult, with more to be announced.