The 2026 Met Gala is on Monday, May 4, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — theme "Costume Art," dress code "Fashion is Art." Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos are this year's lead sponsors and honorary co-chairs, paying about $10 million for the role. It's the first time a private individual rather than a corporation has been lead sponsor, and the first time anyone has served as both co-chair and sponsor at the same time. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is breaking decades of mayoral tradition and skipping; Meryl Streep is skipping; Zendaya is skipping. An anti-billionaire poster campaign called "Everyone Hates Elon" has plastered the city with Bezos critiques.

1. The Boycott Is The Story (Mamdani, Streep, Zendaya, the activists)

A sitting NYC mayor, Meryl Streep, and one of the gala's most reliable fixtures are all not in the room. That is the story.

The mayor of New York skipping the Met Gala is a tradition break, not a scheduling conflict. Bloomberg, de Blasio, and Adams all attended the gala as a default mayoral function. Mamdani is not, and his stated reason is policy: "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." The framing alone — a mayor publicly contrasting affordability with a $10M billionaire-funded gala — is the political opening shot of the year.

The celebrity absences are palpable. Meryl Streep is a near-fixture; Zendaya has been a stalwart of the event for years. Both skipping the same year sends a message no matter what. The Daily Beast and Hollywood Reporter both framed their absences in the context of Bezos sponsorship. Rachel Zegler and Priyanka Chopra are also out.

The protest infrastructure is real, not vibes. An anti-billionaire group called "Everyone Hates Elon" has put up posters and banners across New York reading "Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by the firm that powers ICE" and "Boycott the Bezos Met Gala." The accusations are specific: enabling ICE, avoiding tax, exploiting workers. CNN's framing of the night was "extreme wealth's big night out."

2. Relax -- It's Just A Party, And Bezos Is Paying (Anna Wintour, the pragmatic defense)

The Met Costume Institute needs $10M to stage a major exhibition. Bezos wrote the check.

The institution itself publicly welcomed the sponsorship. Anna Wintour told CNN of Lauren Sanchez Bezos: "We're very grateful for her incredible generosity... we're thrilled she's part of the night." She had previously called Sanchez Bezos a "wonderful asset to the museum and the event." The institution's view is that the money buys a major exhibition that reaches a global audience; the gatekeeper of the gala — Wintour herself — chose them.

The expected guest list is still chock full of stars. Beyonce is back as a named co-chair for the first time in a decade. Sabrina Carpenter, Lena Dunham, Sam Smith, A'ja Wilson, Rihanna and A$AP Rocky, the Jenners, Hailey Bieber, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Chappell Roan, Anne Hathaway, Emma Stone, Bad Bunny, Jacob Elordi, Doechii, Jenna Ortega. Several no-shows have offered career-management reasons — Zendaya's team has cited press tour fatigue and her stylist's relationship with Lauren Sanchez Bezos. From this view, the absentees are a small visible minority and the gala is functioning normally.

This isn't even Bezos's first Met Gala role. He was an honorary chair in 2012, when Amazon was the corporate sponsor. The 2026 version is a more direct version of an already-established relationship between Bezos's wealth and Wintour's institution. The boycott crowd is reacting to the visibility of the arrangement, not its novelty.

3. The Bezos Era Is The Real Shift (CNN, "buying culture" critics)

This is the first private individual to lead-sponsor the Met Gala, and the first co-chair-and-sponsor at once.

This has never happened before. The 2026 sponsorship is the first time a private individual rather than a corporation is lead sponsor, and the first time anyone has been both co-chair and sponsor at the same time. That isn't a routine renewal of an existing patronage relationship; it is a new model in which the billionaire and the institution are no longer separable. The four named co-chairs this year are Wintour, Beyonce, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams; Bezos and Sanchez Bezos sit alongside them as honorary co-chairs while also writing the $10M check.

The optics of "corporate chic" are not subtle. Lauren Sanchez Bezos's pre-gala styling has been described as "corporate chic" — a fitted blood-red set with a black-button wrap top, glossy and tightly tailored. Bezos arrived in his usual aviators and a slick gray suit. The look is calibrated to project ownership rather than fashion-as-play. From the boycott view, that visual itself — two billionaires posing as the gala's hosts — is what's being protested, not the donation.

Where This Lands

The boycott is real: a sitting mayor and two of the gala's most reliable A-listers have publicly opted out, and the protest campaign has named specific accusations Bezos hasn't answered. The pragmatic defense is also real: the Met needs $10M to stage major exhibitions, Wintour herself welcomed the Bezos sponsorship, and most of the celebrity world is showing up anyway. The structural critique sits underneath both: cultural institutions taking direct billionaire patronage as their default funding model is not a story about one gala, it's a story about a new ownership structure for American cultural life.

Sources