Controversy is already swirling around this year’s Met Gala, with protestors launching a poster campaign in the lead-up to the fashion event in opposition to billionaire Jeff Bezos.
The 2026 Met Gala will take place tomorrow morning (AU time), with a bunch of celebrities already earmarking their attendance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City under the theme of Costume Art.
This year marks the first time in the Met Gala’s history that a private individual, Bezos, is appearing as a lead sponsor with his wife Lauren Sanchez. In exchange for the reported $10 million to sponsor the event, Bezos and Sanchez are are named honorary co-chairs, alongside actual co-chairs Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and Anna Wintour.
The involvement of Bezos has sparked backlash among activists, with a boycott campaign already underway in New York City led by political campaign group Everyone Hates Elon.
The group, which formed last year to voice opposition to billionaire Elon Musk, is reportedly responsible for dozens of posters that have popped up throughout Manhattan and taking aim at Bezos’ business practices and his connection to US President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
One poster, reportedly spotted a few blocks from the museum, shows a bottle of urine on a red carpet — in reference to long-running reports of workers at Amazon fulfilment centres lacking adequate bathroom breaks.
Another poster, per The New York Times, calls the fashion event “The Bezos Met Gala” and says it is “brought to you by the firm that powers ICE”.
That’s a reference to Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, which has a contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency responsible for carrying out Trump’s controversial deportation policies throughout much of his second term.
Bezos’ broader connection to the Trump administration, including through Amazon Prime’s funding of the Melania Trump documentary Melania, features heavily in the guerrilla protest campaign, with organisers writing on social media that the efforts are to “expose this evil billionaire and make headlines around the world”.
The controversy around Bezos has already resulted in at least one notable name not appearing at the 2026 Met Gala, with newly-elected New York mayor Zohran Mamdani saying he is skipping the event to focus instead on “making the most expensive city in the United States affordable”.
Rumours also swirled in recent days that The Devil Wears Prada’s Meryl Streep turned down an offer to co-chair this year’s Met due to Bezos’ involvement, though the reports remain unconfirmed.
The Met Gala has been a hotbed of protest in recent years. Black Lives Matter protests erupted outside the event in 2021, the same year attendee Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a dress emblazoned with the phrase “Tax The Rich” on the red carpet.
The two previous Met Galas, meanwhile, have been marked by reactions to the Israel’s bombardment of Palestine, with pro-Palestine protestors lining up outside the museum to spotlight the cause on fashion’s biggest night.
Max Hollein, the CEO of the Met, acknowledged the increased scrutiny placed on the Gala in recent times while touting the event’s enormous fundraising for the museum as being part of “the history of American philanthropy”.
“Right now, maybe there’s an added layer of scrutiny, an added layer of attention to,” Hollein told CNN. “But we will always be grateful for that support from various different sources.”
Whether or not the Bezos protests are successful in creating meaningful change remains to be seen, but with so many eyeballs locked on the steps of the Met, one thing this year is clear: it’s not just about the fashion.
Lead images: Instagram and Getty
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