Money can buy you a lot of things, including a seat at the head of the fashion industry’s most exclusive table.
Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos have been named lead sponsors of the 2026 Met Gala and Costume Institute exhibit, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Monday.
The world’s fourth-richest man, with a fortune of $234 billion, and the 55-year-old former TV journalist will foot much of the bill for the May 4 event, potentially influencing who receives the coveted invitation.
What are some of the famous faces we might see? The guest list for this year’s $50 million wedding in June might give us some clues. The star-studded Venice gala attracted the likes of Sidney Sweeney, the Kardashian-Jenners, Katy Perry, Oprah Winfrey, Karlie Kloss and Ivanka Trump, as well as Josh and Jared Kushner.
According to curator Andrew Bolton, the 2026 exhibition Costume Art will “focus on the clothed body at the heart of the museum, connecting artistic expressions of the body with fashion as an embodied art form.”
Each year, longtime Vogue editor Anna Wintour selects a group of celebrity co-hosts to emcee the event. These stars are the first to appear on the carpet and are usually tied to the theme in some way. Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams and LeBron James will co-chair the 2025 ‘Superfine: Tailoring Black Style’ exhibition, while Michaela Cole, Dua Lipa, Roger Federer and Penelope Cruz have been selected for the 2024 ‘Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty’ exhibition.
A Kardashian and Jenner have never co-hosted the event, and given this year’s theme, Kim might be a potential (albeit controversial) candidate. Sweeney will also be in the headlines more than ever and will add a lot of buzz to the gala, but she has little to do with Vogue and won’t attend the gala until 2022.
There is also the issue of dress code. A dress code will provide guests with further guidance regarding custom looks, but has not yet been announced. For example, the historic 2022 In America: Fashion Anthology gala called for “gold glam, white ties,” which led to Kardashian’s infamous decision to pull one of Marilyn Monroe’s iconic dresses from the archives.
Amy O’Dell, author of the best-selling Anna Wintour biography, theorized in a video that the “costume art” dress code encourages celebrities to wear their best “naked” dresses, driving engagement online.
This would be a perfect direction for Sanchez, who tends to favor figure-hugging designs and rarely avoids sheer pieces.
The couple aren’t the first billionaires to take on the event. In 2018, Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman and his wife Christine helped fund the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Celestial Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” exhibition. Ultimately, the exhibition attracted more than 1.6 million visitors, making it the most-visited exhibition in the museum’s history.
The Times reported that they wrote checks for about $5 million at the time, suggesting Sanchez and Bezos’ contributions were worth at least seven figures.
Anna Wintour defended the couple’s selection as sponsors, telling The New York Times that Sanchez “loves costumes” and “loves fashion.” Additional support will also be provided by Saint Laurent and Condé Nast.
This is not the first time Bezos has attended the Met Gala. He served as honorary chairman of the 2012 event, which was sponsored by Amazon, and attended with his then-wife Mackenzie Scott. He also independently participated in the 2019 “Camp: Notes on Fashion” themed event.
