How much does it cost to attend the Met Gala?

The 2023 Met Gala will be held on 1 May

The 2023 Met Gala is only days away and celebrities all over the country are preparing for New York City’s biggest night in fashion.

The theme of the extravaganza, which is an annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, will be “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty”. The event will pay homage to the late designer through its dress code: “In honour of Karl”.

Along with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, the fete will have four co-chairs: Dua Lipa, Michaela Coel, Penélope Cruz, and Roger Federer.

While each guest invited to the Met Gala is carefully chosen by Wintour, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have the opportunity to attend for free.

Here’s everything you need to know about how much it costs to go to the Met Gala.

Earlier this month, a source claimed to Page Six that the price to attend the event had gone up this year and that tickets cost $50,000 per person.

In 2018, tickets weren’t nearly as pricy -The New York Times reported that tickets cost $30,000 a piece at the time and it ran about $275,000 to book a table at the event. The following year, prices saw a slight increase. The Evening Standard reported that one ticket for the 2019 gala was $35,000.

Before the gala was as popular as it is now, the price to go was significantly less. From the 1970s to ‘80s, the cost for one ticket was as low as $1,000 a piece, according to Women’s Wear Daily (WWD). As the years went on, the rise in price wasn’t too significant. It cost $3,500 for celebrities to attend the gala as of 2001.

While each ticket for this year’s event is $50,000 a person, this doesn’t necessarily mean that celebrities are the ones to pay this hefty price. Designers usually purchase a table at the event and then fill it with the celebrities that they are styling, according to WWD.

From there, Wintour decides which of the celebrities chosen by the designers get to attend the event. And the Vogue editor is famously very picky when making her guest list. WWD claimed that designers have previously purchased a table and had their intended celebrity guest replaced at the request of Wintour.

Wintour’s guests for this year’s event are being asked to follow a specific dress code for the occasion, which is dedicated to Lagerfeld. According to Vogue, there are “wondrous ways” that guests can “salute one of fashion’s greats”, such through wearing a “modern-day” look from Chanel or Fendi, “two houses on which Lagerfeld left an indelible impression”.

The 2023 Met Gala will take place on 1 May, with Vogue’s livestream of the event starting at 6.30pm ET (11.30pm GMT). Here’s everything that you need to know about how to watch it.