NEW YORK CITY — The 2026 Met Gala kicked off tonight at the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art under a cloud of protest, celebrity no-shows and a $10 million billionaire sponsorship that has turned fashion's biggest night into the most polarizing edition in the gala's 78-year history.

Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos are bankrolling this year's spectacle in what insiders are calling the largest individual financial commitment in Met Gala history. The roughly $10 million underwriting deal — first reported earlier this spring — has unleashed a citywide backlash, a viral "Boycott the Bezos Met Gala" poster campaign across Manhattan, and the highest-profile mayoral snub the event has ever seen.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani Skips A Decades-Old Tradition

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — sworn in earlier this year on a platform built around housing affordability and a frontal critique of the billionaire class — confirmed last week that he and his wife, artist Rama Duwaji, would not be attending. The decision broke a tradition that has held in some form since the Koch administration, with mayors of every political stripe walking the carpet alongside Anna Wintour and her chosen co-chairs.

"My focus this year is on affordability and making the most expensive city in the United States affordable for the people who actually live here," Mamdani said in a statement. "I'm not going to spend an evening at a $100,000-a-seat fundraiser celebrating a man whose company is being investigated by my own administration."

The reference is to a New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection probe — opened in March — into Amazon delivery practices in the five boroughs. Mamdani's transition team has also been openly critical of Amazon's reported cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on data-sharing requests.

Beyoncé Returns To The Carpet After A Decade Away

Despite the political static, the marquee draw on Monday night was the return of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, walking the Met steps for the first time since 2016. The "Cowboy Carter" superstar is one of four official co-chairs alongside Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Wintour herself, and she arrived to the loudest reception of the night, dressed in a custom Tyler Mitchell-shot ensemble that organizers had previewed only with the most cryptic of teasers.

Kim Kardashian, Halle Berry, Katy Perry, Cardi B and Pedro Pascal were among the early arrivals working the museum's grand staircase under the Costume Institute's "Costume Art" theme — a dress code that explicitly invited interpretations of "fashion as art" and pushed designers toward the most architectural pieces of the year.

Tom Ford, who almost never attends, was photographed walking the carpet alongside actress Julianne Moore, while Meryl Streep — who had been listed by multiple outlets as a likely attendee — was a visible no-show, joining what watchdog publications counted as at least nine formerly reliable Met Gala regulars who declined invitations this year.

The Numbers Behind The Most Expensive Gala Ever

Tickets to the 2026 Met Gala sold for $100,000 per individual seat and $350,000 per table — both records — with proceeds funding the Costume Institute, the only curatorial department at the Metropolitan Museum that is required to fund itself. The Bezos-Sánchez sponsorship, organizers say, will close roughly 40 percent of the institute's annual operating budget on its own, a level of single-donor influence that has alarmed museum scholars.

"There has never been a single sponsor who underwrote this much of the gala," said one former Costume Institute curator who asked not to be named. "When one person is paying that much, the line between patronage and editorial control gets very thin very fast."

Anna Wintour, who has chaired the gala in some form since 1995, has dismissed the criticism. In remarks to reporters last week, she defended the Bezos role as "essential" to keeping the institute open and accused critics of "weaponizing fashion to score political points."

Protests Outside, Pressure Inside

By 4 p.m. Monday, NYPD officers had cordoned off Fifth Avenue from 80th to 84th Streets, and a crowd of several hundred protesters organized by labor groups and the Working Families Party gathered behind barricades on the south side of the museum. Demonstrators chanted slogans including "Tax Amazon, Not The Bronx" and held aloft signs reading "Boycott The Bezos Met Gala," reproductions of the wheat-pasted posters that had appeared on storefronts and bus shelters across the city in recent weeks.

Inside, the political pressure showed up in a different way. At least six designers, according to industry trade publication The Business of Fashion, instructed their celebrity dressers to avoid posing in front of the Bezos-sponsored signage on the carpet. Several stylists confirmed the directive privately.

What It Means For Americans Beyond Fifth Avenue

For most of the country, the Met Gala lives somewhere between cultural curiosity and Twitter punching bag. But the 2026 edition has become a flashpoint for a much larger conversation about who pays for culture in America — and what they get in return for that money.

The roughly two dozen members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Antitrust Caucus released a joint statement Monday morning calling on the Metropolitan Museum to disclose the full terms of the Bezos sponsorship under New York's Not-for-Profit Corporation Law. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime Bezos critic, posted on X: "When one billionaire can buy 40% of a public institution's flagship event, that's not philanthropy. That's capture."

Bezos himself walked the carpet just after 7 p.m. Eastern, accompanied by Sánchez and his oldest son, Preston. He did not stop for reporters and did not respond to questions shouted over the barricades. A spokesperson for the couple released a statement earlier in the day saying their patronage was "an act of love for this city and the institutions that make it the cultural capital of the world."

The First Monday in May has long been described as the Oscars of the East Coast. In 2026, it has also become a referendum — on wealth, on access, and on whether one of America's last reliably bipartisan red carpets can survive being stamped with a single name.