The 2026 Met Gala in New York draws protests and calls for boycotts after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos are named honorary chairs and lead sponsors. The Metropolitan Museum of Art event, an invitation-only fundraising gala for the Costume Institute, is held on the first Monday of May and features high-profile celebrity attendance and about $100,000 tickets. Multiple outlets report that the sponsor-led controversy has prompted demonstrations across the city, including an activist group using street posters and hacked-style ads to criticize Bezos and link him to issues raised by protesters. Coverage also describes mock displays and installations near the museum, including references to worker conditions and other corporate-related grievances, as well as messages projected onto Bezos’s property.
Several celebrities reportedly skip the gala or publicly criticize it in response to Bezos’s involvement, with some commenting on the symbolic “status” of the event and broader concerns about inequality and labor practices. Organizers and representatives for Bezos are contacted for comment in some accounts, while an activist group publicly frames the campaign as targeting billionaires more broadly. According to reports, Bezos does not appear on the red carpet, while Sánchez does.
