The celebrities have all walked up the steps at the 2026 Met Gala, and left us with much to discuss.

As they do every year, some of the biggest names in film, fashion and music attended the exclusive Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala, and interpreted the dress code in unique and unforgettable ways. This year, the Met’s exhibit “Costume Art” (and the evening’s dress code, “Fashion as Art”) was the jumping-off point for celebrity ensembles that were artistic, interesting, carefully considered and (in some cases) more than a little creepy.

From the best family photo on the red carpet to the worst thing we’re going to see when we close our eyes tonight, read on for the Best, Worst and Most “Oops” outfits, accessories and overall trends from this year’s Met Gala red carpet.

Oops, Were There Other People Coming?

Beyoncé wasn’t the last to arrive on the Met Gala steps, but don’t tell that to the poor celebrities who had to follow in her massively-trained wake as photographers screamed for her to stop for just one more photo.

Worst Time to Obstruct Your Vision

You couldn’t pay us enough to don some eye-blocking accessories just before ascending a notoriously steep set of stairs in front of hundreds of cameras, but that’s what separates us from the people (like Katy Perry, Sarah Paulson, Luke Evans and Rachel Zegler) who got a ticket to the event this year.

Best Reason to Break the Rules a Bit

Technically, people under 18 aren’t invited to the Costume Institute Gala. But for co-chair Nicole Kidman (and co-chair Beyoncé!), when your daughter is a fashionista in her own right, rules were made to be broken.

Breast — Oops, We Mean Best

Of course, with an exhibit that is all about how the human body is a vessel for fashion, we expected to see quite a few naked interpretations of the theme. Some of the artsiest? Chase Infiniti’s Thom Browne, Doja Cat’s Saint Laurent and Hailey Bieber’s Saint Laurent.

Best Just for Being Herself

Why do we feel like Stevie Nicks already had this in her closet?

Best Reunion After No Time Apart

Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt (with her sister and his wife, Felicity Blunt) haven’t spent nearly enough time together on their Devil Wears Prada 2 world tour or their joint Hollywood Walk of Fame star ceremony. They needed to put on black tie and hit an event reminiscent of the one in their blockbuster movie two days later.

Oops, Did They Not See Each Other Before They Left the House?

We’re envisioning that Spider-Man meme between Kim Kardashian and her sisters Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner: “Wait, you’re wearing the sculpted boob dress? I thought I was!”

Best Princess of Genovia Moment

On a night when so many go high-concept, we can appreciate a look that’s just plain pretty. Case in point: Anne Hathaway’s Michael Kors Collection gown, handpainted by artist Peter McGough and worn with some spectacular Bulgari jewelry. Just add a tiara and you’ve got Princess Diaries 3 material.

Best Modern Art Interpretation

Many stars were inspired by the sculptures and paintings inside the walls of the Met, but Sabrina Carpenter didn’t forget that cinema is an art form too — and paid tribute by donning a Dior gown by Jonathan Anderson created of the film strips for the 1954 Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina.

Biggest Time Commitment

Ciara’s tribute to Nefertiti included a painstakingly gilded spiked coif, which she admitted took quite some time to achieve. Worth it for this photo, to be honest.

Best Time to Try It

If you’re ever going to have fun with makeup, the Met Gala is the place to do it, so we appreciate the risks taken here by Hudson Williams (going for a “White Swan/Black Swan” thing, he said), Madonna and Angela Bassett — even if the result is a little consumption-adjacent.

Best Night for Cool Couples

Rihanna and A$AP Rocky (as well as these other celebrity duos) prove that all you need to keep the spark alive is to be extremely hot, get invited to very exclusive events and then dress better than anyone else there. How hard can that be?

The Annual Supermodel Award for Lowest Commitment to the Theme

Kate Upton has won it. Karlie Kloss has won it. And now it is our honor to bestow upon Kate Moss the annual prize for the supermodel who relied solely on her face card (rather than a fabulously interpretive outfit) to deliver her Met Gala moment.

Worst Bunny

He’s always Bad Bunny, but tonight, he aged himself up with realistic prosthetics to, as Vogue suggests, reflect the idea of the aging body and its relationship to art. Bring back Benito! (Oh, who are we kidding. He’s still hot.)

Worst Night to Take Off Your Makeup Before Bed

The idea of the human body as a fashion piece also lent itself to a lot of painted-on body art that we imagine Paloma Elsesser, A’ja Wilson, Anok Yai and Ashley Graham will be scrubbing off with makeup wipes for an extended period of time tonight.

Best Night for a Good Holiday Card Photo

We bet Beyoncé’s going to use this one to kick off the seven page double-sided newsletter she mails out to friends and family at Christmas.

Worst Sleep Paralysis Demons

When we heard the dress code, we imagined a lot of naked dresses. We could not have guessed things would get quite so scary. Jordan Roth, Heidi Klum and Gwendoline Christie delivered very creative and labor-intensive takes on the theme, which we both appreciated for the work that went into them and will probably be haunted by for some time to come.

People

Two decades after Miranda Priestly famously dropped a coat on a desk and permanently altered how the world looks at fashion and fear, she’s back. And yes, she still looks like she could end your career with a single raised eyebrow.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 has walked into cinemas with all the confidence of a runway finale, opening to a dazzling $233.6 million worldwide. The numbers tell a story even Miranda might approve of. The film earned $77 million in North America and $156.6 million internationally, against a reported $100 million production budget.

Not bad for a sequel stepping back into heels that were never really left behind.

outshine the original

According to the Associated Press, the budget ballooned largely because of its star-studded lineup. Director David Frankel admitted that once the ‘biggest stars in the world’ were accounted for, the remaining production spend felt surprisingly similar to the scrappier 2006 original.

Disney’s 20th Century Studios leaned fully into legacy marketing. The cast, Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci, did the rounds in style capitals across the world, while Anna Wintour herself joined the spectacle with appearances alongside the cast and a Vogue cover moment that felt more like canon than promotion, notes Associated Press.

The nostalgia strategy clearly worked. In the weeks leading up to release, streaming of the original The Devil Wears Prada surged by 428 per cent, proving that audiences were ready for the sequel.

Elsewhere at the box office, the competition tried its best to keep up. The Michael Jackson biopic Michael posted a respectable $54 million domestically and $423.9 million globally, holding steady in its second weekend with a modest 44% drop. Strong numbers—but not enough to outshine the cerulean wave sweeping theatres.

How much did the original film make?

The original The Devil Wears Prada was a sleeper hit when it debuted in June 2006. On a relatively modest production budget of $35 million, it went on to earn $326.7 million worldwide.

Here is the breakdown of its original run:

• Domestic (US and Canada): $124.7 million
• International: $201.9 million
• Total worldwide: $326.7 million
• To put that in perspective, the film earned over nine times its production budget, which is a huge win for a mid-budget comedy-drama. It also set a high bar for the sequel, though the new film’s $233.6 million global opening weekend suggests Miranda Priestly’s influence has only grown over the last twenty years.

GN With inputs from the Associated Press

Michael, the big-budget Michael Jackson biopic, has shrugged off bad reviews and a troubled production to launch with a $97m opening in North American theaters, contributing to its enormous $217m (£160m, A$303m) worldwide box office and shattering the record for the biggest biopic opening of all time.

The film, a highly authorised portrayal of the “king of pop” that was co-produced by the Jackson estate and stars Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson, took $120.4m internationally and $97m domestic – combining to surpass Oppenheimer’s $180.4m worldwide opening weekend in 2023 and Bohemian Rhapsody’s $124m in 2018.

The film has now opened in most of the world – one notable exception being Japan, home to a huge Jackson fanbase, where it will open in June.

Michael’s $97m domestic debut also surpassed records set by previous biopics in North America, including Oppenheimer ($82m in 2023), Straight Outta Compton ($60.2m in 2015) and Bohemian Rhapsody ($51m in 2018).

Critics have criticised Michael for glossing over some of the less convenient aspects of Jackson’s life but audiences have been far more enthusiastic: on Rotten Tomatoes its critics score is 38%, compared with 97% from audiences. A few weeks back, estimates for Michael’s North American opening weekend were closer to $50m but this rose to $70m – which it wildly overperformed.

“From the beginning, all of the signals were that something like this was possible,” the Lionsgate chairman, Adam Fogelson, told Associated Press. “We were seeing massive engagement with every conceivable audience segment that you could identify.”

Even in the lucrative market of music biopics, Michael was an audacious bet by Lionsgate on a controversial figure. The reputation of Jackson, who died in 2009 at the age of 50, has been repeatedly tarnished by allegations of sexual abuse of children. Jackson and his estate have maintained his innocence, though the pop star acknowledged sharing a bedroom with other people’s children. He was acquitted in his sole criminal trial in 2005.

Some Jackson family members opposed the film: his sister Janet Jackson was uninvolved and doesn’t appear in it, while Jackson’s daughter, Paris, called it “fantasy land”.

The film also had an unusually rocky production. After shooting was completed, producers realised they had made a costly mistake. The third act focused on the accusations of Jordan Chandler, then 13 years old, whom Jackson paid $23m to in a 1994 settlement. The terms of that settlement barred the Jackson estate from ever mentioning Chandler in a movie.

A huge chunk of the film was cut and reshoots for as much as $50m were done at the estate’s expense. Director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriter John Logan reworked the movie to conclude in 1988, before any accusations were made.

“I would take issue with the idea that we as a studio or as film-makers were running around in a panic,” Fogelson told AP on Sunday, labelling it “a unique and challenging circumstance” instead

Yet as bad as things once looked for Michael, the movie turned into a huge hit. The film’s total production cost came close to $200m. To defray costs, Lionsgate sold international distribution rights to Universal. A sequel is in development. A third film after that, Fogelson said, is “not inconceivable.”

Director Antoine Fuqua has said he would like to direct the sequel, telling Deadline on Sunday: “It would kill me if somebody else did it.”

Cut footage could be repurposed as the shoots went “pretty far”, Fuqua added: “We went through the Jordan allegations we couldn’t use. We went farther than that. Maybe a year or two after that (1995) when things turned against Michael.”

Plans for Michael were first announced in 2022, three years after the release of Leaving Neverland, the 2019 documentary about Jackson’s alleged sexual abuse of children. The Leaving Neverland director, Dan Reed, recently told the Guardian: “It kind of fills me with horror, the degree to which everyone can turn a blind eye to the fact that this guy was a bit of a monster.”

Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen biopic, remains the highest-grossing music biopic of all time after taking $910m at the global box office, while Oppenheimer holds the record for overall biopic with $975m.

The Guardian