It’s a crisp Monday morning, you open your phone, probably to doomscroll because what else is one supposed to do to cure the Monday blues, and the only thing filling your timelines is just two words – MET Gala.
The Met Gala 2026 just took place on May 4, 2026, and I can guarantee that literally no social media platform is free from incessant chatter about anything and everything related to it. From what celebrities were wearing, to the Hits and Misses, to deep dives into the creation of the outfits, to just straight-up bashing and hate-watching of the show.
While the Met Gala still holds great prominence in the fashion and entertainment world, there has been a notable shift in its perception among the general public.
Although there are still those who gush over everything about it, there are also those raising questions about its relevance in today’s time and maybe how it does more harm than good?
The controversy with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos being a key sponsor of the show has been one of the hottest topics surrounding the event. Protests have been taking place, and one even attempted to crash the red carpet of the event itself.
The biggest point is that this year, the backlash isn’t just loud; it’s organised, ideological, and impossible to look away from. Here are five reasons why the Met Gala is drowning in criticism this year.
The Jeff Bezos Controversy
At the centre of the 2026 storm stands one man: Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chair, who, along with his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, dropped a reported $10 million to become the event’s lead sponsors and honorary co-chairs.
The moment that arrangement was announced, the backlash began, and it hasn’t stopped since.
For many critics, the problem isn’t simply that Bezos is wealthy. It’s what his wealth is built on, and who it’s connected to. Activists from the group Everyone Hates Elon, named for another polarising billionaire, plastered New York City with boycott posters in the weeks leading up to the gala.
One read: “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation.” Another cut even deeper: “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by the company that powers ICE.”
The group also reportedly hid almost 300 “piss bottles” in the Met Museum before the gala.
In their Instagram post, they wrote, “We just hid HUNDREDS of ‘piss bottles’* in the @metmuseum to protest @jeffbezos hosting the Met Gala. Jeff Bezos’s company Amazon is literally being sued for forcing workers to urinate in bottles. Amazon avoids MILLIONS in tax and Bezos is one of the world’s richest men. The Met Museum is taking the PISS by having Jeff honoured as their Gala host. When they celebrate Trump’s billionaires, let’s ridicule them instead.”
They did clarify in the post that it was not real urine, writing, “*Not real piss obvs.”
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Refused To Attend
When politicians and A-list talent start sending their regrets, it signals something beyond the usual performative discourse. This year, the number of high-profile absences from the Met Gala was striking enough that the museum itself was forced into what insiders described as damage control mode.
New York City’s freshly elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani, made the deliberate choice to skip an event that his predecessors had reliably attended.
On April 16, 2026, Mamdani, in an interview with Hell Gate, confirmed that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, will not be attending this year’s Met Gala.
When asked about the reason for doing so, Mamdani said, “I think they’re [Met] a critical part of the city. My focus is also on affordability and making the most expensive city in the United States affordable, and that’s what I’m looking to spend a lot of my time focused on.”
For a mayor elected on a wave of anti-inequality sentiment, showing up to sip champagne at a $100,000-a-ticket gala sponsored by one of the world’s wealthiest men would have been politically untenable, and he clearly knew it.
Among celebrities, Zendaya’s absence was perhaps the most symbolically loaded. The actress had become one of the gala’s signature presences.
Her stylist, Law Roach, offered a studied non-answer when asked about her absence, saying that this year’s event would be the first time in his career when it’s “all about him, and not his Spider-Man client,” leaving the actual reason diplomatically unstated. The implication wasn’t lost on anyone.
Meryl Streep’s representatives, meanwhile, offered a characteristically graceful deflection through Page Six, saying, “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended. While she appreciates Vogue, Anna, and her incredible imagination and stamina, it has never quite been her scene.”
Read More: Prada Falls In Line: Finally Names Collection After India, Kolhapur
Rich Flashing Their Wealth During Geopolitical Crisis Times
The 2026 Met Gala didn’t occur in a vacuum. It unfolded against a backdrop of rising global instability, escalating economic anxiety, and a domestic political climate defined by inequality and resentment.
For many observers, watching celebrities wear millions of dollars’ worth of jewellery to an event sponsored by one of the world’s wealthiest oligarchs while ordinary people struggled to fill their gas tanks crossed from aspirational fantasy into something far more corrosive.
The optics were captured with devastating bluntness by a spokesperson for Everyone Hates Elon, speaking to The Daily Beast: “If you look at what people are going through right now, people can’t afford to put gas in their cars, then you have people wearing millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds to an event hosted by one of Trump’s oligarchs, it looks crazy out of touch. It feels like the Hunger Games. So if the Met Gala wants to remain at all in touch with popular culture, it should definitely reassess who it lets be involved.”
People have been taking to social media to mock the Met Gala, considering the condition of the entire world currently.
View this post on Instagram
The pre-gala parties threw the contrast into even sharper relief. As Bezos and Sánchez Bezos hosted a glittering pre-gala evening that drew stars like Nicole Kidman and Kendall Jenner, activists outside were projecting boycott messages onto buildings visible from Bezos’s Manhattan penthouse, calling attention to wealth inequality, climate accountability, and labour rights.
The world is still dealing with the US-Iran-Israel war, global supply chains in disarray, the situation and genocide incited by Israel against Palestine is still not over, and multiple countries are dealing with their own socio-political issues.
In the midst of all that, such a display of wealth, where billionaires and rich celebrities are stepping out in luxury that many of us cannot even dream of, feels very much like the setting of a dystopian universe.
The Dark History Of MET
For all its cultural prestige, the Met Gala carries a long record of controversies that span racism, cultural appropriation, political hypocrisy, and the uncomfortable entanglement of art with commerce and power.
The event began innocuously enough: a midnight dinner in December 1948, charging $50 a seat, organised by fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert to raise funds for the Met’s newly established Costume Institute. But it has evolved into something barely recognisable from those humble origins.
The history of racially and culturally insensitive themes is one of the most persistent shadows over the gala’s legacy. The 2015 theme, “China: Through the Looking Glass,” sparked widespread criticism from Asian American communities.
Critics called it “a reminder of the subtle institutionalised racism that’s been compounded by centuries of Asian isolationism across the board, and enduring Western stereotypes exacerbated by ignorance and the meme-able nature of social media.”
The 2023 edition, which honoured Karl Lagerfeld, invited its own reckoning. Lagerfeld was a titan of fashion, but also a man with a documented history of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic statements.
Several people online have also raised the issue of how the Metropolitan Museum of Art was once free for the public. The 1893 New York State act required that the museum be “open and accessible to the public free of all charge throughout the year”.
However, this decision was changed in 2018, when the Met implemented a mandatory $25 admission fee for out-of-state visitors, moving away from a longstanding “pay-what-you-wish” policy, although it remains in place for New York residents.
Ricardo Gamboa (@the_scarlet_faguette), an artist and activist, posted about the Met’s dark history, from JP Morgan’s time as president of the museum to the thousands of items in the museum collection that were allegedly acquired through wrongful means.
$100,000 A Ticket In The Most Expensive City In America
Numbers, stripped of all their glamour, have a way of cutting through the noise. And the number at the centre of the 2026 Met Gala is simply this: $100,000. That is the price of a single ticket to attend this year’s event. A table costs $350,000. Guests must be personally invited by the museum to purchase either.
To put that in context: the median household income in New York City hovers around $75,000 a year.
The city that hosts fashion’s biggest night is, by the reckoning of its own new mayor, the most expensive city in the United States, a place where working-class residents commute hours each way because they can no longer afford to live near where they work, where the affordable housing waitlist stretches for years, and where food banks reported surging demand through 2025.
Ticket prices for the Met Gala have been climbing steadily. As recently as 2025, a seat cost around $75,000.
The jump to $100,000 for 2026 reflects a decade-long pattern that CNN described as the transformation of the gala from “an archetypal charity benefit into a celebrity-fueled phenomenon, an effort that has led to bigger and bigger ambitions for the museum, alongside ever-increasing ticket prices.”
Marie Claire reported that those escalating prices have actually narrowed the field of possible sponsors in a way that reveals an uncomfortable truth: “A decade ago, major luxury fashion houses would be the leading co-sponsors of the Met Gala; today, Bezos’s wealth makes him one of the few who can back the event.”
View this post on Instagram
In other words, the gala has priced itself into a corner where only billionaires can afford the front row, which in turn determines who shapes the evening’s meaning and whose image gets laundered by association with art and culture.
Reports surfaced in the weeks before the event that, for the first time in recent memory, ticket prices were quietly being discounted as the date approached. An unnamed insider told journalist Rob Shuter, “Prices are coming down because they have to. Designers aren’t buying like they used to. The demand just isn’t there.”
The source attributed the shift to both the Bezoses’ involvement and Wintour’s 2025 departure as editor-in-chief of Vogue, adding: “The event feels politically charged, and no one wants to be on the wrong side of that.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Firstpost, The New York Times, CNN
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: met gala, met gala 2026, met gala theme, met gala 2026 theme, met gala 2026 controversies, met gala 2026 jeff bezos, met gala boycott, met gala 2026 boycott, jeff bezos met gala, jeff bezos met gala controversy, met gala controversy, met gala controversy 2026, met gala hate, met gala controversial
Disclaimer: We do not own any rights or copyrights to the images used; these images have been sourced from Google. If you require credits or wish to request removal, please contact us via email.
