Nicole Kidman to co-chair Met Gala with Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour
Nicole Kidman has been announced as one of the co-chairs of the 2026 Met Gala. (AP: Invision/Evan Agostini)
In short:
The 2026 Met Gala will be co-chaired by Nicole Kidman, Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour.
The museum on Wednesday also announced a gala host committee, chaired by designer Anthony Vaccarello and filmmaker Zoë Kravitz.
What's next?
The dress code for the May 4 event is yet to be announced, but it will dovetail with the theme of Costume Art.
Australia's Nicole Kidman has been announced as a co-chair of the Met Gala alongside Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour for the star-studded event next May.
Williams, who has never hosted before, takes the role seven years after her younger sister and fellow tennis champion, Serena, was co-chair.
Beyoncé was 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 $US31 million ($46 million) to the coffers of 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 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.
Beyoncé was honorary chair in 2013. (Reuters: Eduardo Munoz)
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, skin-tight latex gown.
Anna Wintour oversees the star-studded event. (Reuters: Andrew Kelly)
The dress code for the May 4 event is 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.
Venus Williams will host for the fist time in 2026. (AP: Evan Agostini/Invision)
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 Aging Body.
The new exhibit will also have a splashy new home.
Costume Art will inaugurate new gallery space occupying 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".
Costume Art opens to the public May 10, 2026, and runs until January 10, 2027.
AP