Up there with the Academy Awards, Monaco Grand Prix, and Cannes, getting an invite to the Met Gala should be about as exclusive as they come.
Founded in 1948 by fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, the first Met Gala raised money for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum but has since grown from a tiny acorn into a haute couture oak tree.
2026's edition is no exception, and while Anna Wintour once again assumed her position as permanent chair (kicking things off in 1995), she's joined by a trifecta of talent in the form of Beyoncé, Venus Williams, and Nicole Kidman stepping up as co-chairs.
Away from an A-list guest list that's tipped to include everyone from Sabrina Carpenter to Jacob Elordi, Emma Stone to Timothée Chalamet, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are honorary chairs and sponsors for the Met Gala in 2026.
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There's already been a backlash to Bezos and Sánchez's involvement, with New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, refusing to attend, while others like Zendaya and Meryl Streep are also MIA.
If that wasn't enough, the activist group called Everyone Hates Elon staged its own protest by hiding 300 one-liter bottles of fake urine, plastered with Bezos' face, around the museum.
As pointed out by author and journalist Amy Odell, the Met Gala could be coined as the 'Tech Gala', especially with Bezos' involvement as the overlord of Amazon.
Back in 2003, Tom Ford was a co-chair alongside Kidman and Wintour, with those who weren't on the exclusive invite list being able to purchase a $250 ticket to watch the fashion event of the year up close and personal. It was the same year you could splurge $3,500 on a seat at the after-dinner in the Great Hall.
That's a far cry from where we are in 2026, and as Wintour approaches her 30th year, tickets are now $100,000 – marking a $25,000 increase from 2025.
Calling out this lofty price of admission, Odell says that Wintour has effectively priced everyone other than tech companies and their billionaire founders or CEOs from attending. She says that tech companies have "not only run roughshod over society writ large but are also run by some of the most loathed people in the world," pointing to Mark Zuckerberg appearing on the front row of a Prada show.
Even if Bezos covered the Met Gala's $6 million price tag, it would supposedly be equivalent to the average American household spending just $2. Table buyers for 2026 are said to include OpenAI, Snapchat, and Meta, which seems unsurprising given that the latter's first quarter earnings are expected to reach more than $55 billion in revenue when compared to Gucci's $1.5 billion.
Of course, the PR and marketing that comes from Bezos sponsoring the Met Gala isn't exactly new.
Amazon first sponsored the Met Gala in 2012 when it opened the Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations exhibition. This set a trend, with Yahoo footing the bill in 2016, Apple in 2017, and Instagram opting for both 2021 and 2022.
TikTok reportedly broke the record when it splashed in the 'high seven figures' for 2024's Met Gala, which just so happened to be the same year OpenAI was integrated into the exhibition.
Despite Sam Altman being thrown out of the Ritz due to his sports shoes, Odell suggests it wouldn't be out of place to see him or Zuckerberg descending the stairs to shake hands with Bezos, noting: "They may not be cool, but if the party is this expensive, who else has the money to buy a seat?"
Fearing that the Met Gala could be in danger of becoming 'uncool' as it's flooded with Silicon Valley billionaires, she concluded: "Has the event become so expensive and tech billionaires so wealthy that the fashion brands the evening is meant to support have gotten an inadvertent boot for people who can stage a Met Gala at one of their homes for Kris Jenner’s birthday party?"