The Vanity Fair Guide to the Met Gala After-Party Circuit
Let’s get this straight: if you have not gotten your invitation to the 2026 Met Gala by now—the annual fundraiser at The Metropolitan Museum of Art—it isn’t taking place. Your movie star friend-of-a-friend is by no means going to deliver you as a plus-one. And even should you are by some means blessed sufficient to have the option to give a multi-million-dollar donation to a cultural establishment…nicely, the visitor record is already stuffed with these whose checks have already been cashed. (May we recommend The Met Opera as an alternative?)
Met Gala after-parties, nonetheless? Well… you’ve an honest shot. Whereas there’s only one Met Galayearly dozens of occasions pop-up in its wake, inviting a cool crowd to replenish the rooms and drink Champagne all in the identify of style. Below, our information to Met Gala after-parties.
The Uptown Affairs
The Met Gala itself is held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The evening’s first wave of events start at 10 pm and happen close by on the blocks surrounding it on the Upper East Side—often at The Mark and The Carlyle resorts, the place a vital mass of the Met Gala’s company keep. The Mark has hosted a variety of occasions over the years—together with events for Karl by Karl Lagerfeld in 2023 and Willy Chavarria x Don Julio in 2025. For the previous few years, the Carlyle has been house to Cartier‘s elegant post-Met bash, held at the resort’s iconic Bemelmans Bar amongst Madeline author and illustrator Ludwig Bemelmans’s murals. (They serve an wonderful pigs in a blanket.) Then there’s all the time a wild card location: Instagram as soon as threw a celebration at the historic James P. Duke House. And it is arduous to think about there not Being a glitzy bash at Maxime’s this 12 months, Robin Birley’s chi-chi members membership with its Rifat Özbek–designed interiors.
The dress code for these events is on the formal finish: many company are coming straight from the gala and present up in the very outfits they wore on the crimson carpet. So possibly save your sequin gown with cutouts for…
The Downtown Bashes
Word to the weary: these events do not begin till no less than midnight. Their invites could technically have an earlier time—however with the Met Gala itself ending round 10, the uptown events, and the reality that almost all of the VIPs truly invited to the Met do a high-profile outfit change right into a extra party-appropriate look—it takes time for any form of vital mass to make their method to Union Square and beneath. Their first cease will doubtless be the GQ social gathering, at an beneath wraps location.
After that? It’s off to The Standard’s Boom Boom Room. The social gathering at Boom is arguably the most well-known of the evening: it is existed at the similar place and similar time for nearly twenty years. (It’s additionally the location of one in every of the most dramatic moments in popular culture: when Solange and Jay-Z received in an elevator.) This 12 months, the Boom social gathering is hosted by Grace Gummer (recent off her love story buzz), Gabriela Hearst, and Yola Mezcal. Oh they usually would possibly swing by Baz Luhrmann’s bar Monsieur—The Moulin Rouge director is known for throwing collectively raging late evening events.
