This Year’s Met Gala Raises the Most Money in Its History

The Met Gala has outdone itself, even before it’s begun.

The annual gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — the flashy fashion extravaganza that highlights the city’s social scene every May — raised a record $31 million this year, museum officials announced on Monday, the biggest gross in the event’s 77-year history.

The money haul — and the avid interest the gala inspires — further cements its place as the pre-eminent benefit among the city’s cultural institutions, and one the world’s most sought-after tickets. The Met’s take dwarfs events like a September gala for the New York Philharmonic (which brought in nearly $4 million) and the 2024 event for the Whitney Museum of American Art, which raised some $5.2 million.

The $31 million figure does not reflect the seven-figure cost of staging the gala, which will kick off on Monday evening with the procession of pop stars, fashion icons and sporting-world superstars striding the red carpet, enduring countless flashbulbs, and surrounded by a swarm of publicity and eager onlookers.

The gala will act, as always, as the opening of a Costume Institute exhibition: This year’s is entitled “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” examining 300 years of Black fashion and the vibrant history of Black dandyism.

That emphasis is a significant departure from the department’s largely monochromatic past: This is the Met’s first fashion exhibition devoted entirely to designers of color, and is being seen as part of a larger effort to diversify the collection. It is also a rarity for its focus on men’s wear.

As such, it drew an array of Black celebrities to help host the event — including Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, ASAP Rocky and Pharrell Williams. LeBron James, whose Los Angeles Lakers were bounced from the N.B.A. playoffs last week, is the honorary chair.

The event’s proceeds will fill the coffers of the Costume Institute, which is dependent on it for its operating costs; it is the only such department that raises its own budget. But the gala, typically held on the first Monday in May, also carries cultural cachet far beyond a mere benefit, likened to the Super Bowl of fashion or the Oscars of the East Coast.

“It’s gone beyond what a fund-raising event usually is,” said Rachel Feinberg, a consultant who has worked on galas in New York City, noting its endorsements and celebrity buy-in, as well as its sheer spectacle. “It’s not necessarily the cause that everyone’s coming for; it’s to be a part of the event.”

Indeed, the gala’s glamour often overshadows its place as a formidable financial machine. With a guest list of just a few hundred notables, it is both a nearly impossible ticket and a very pricey date: Tables for 10 start at $350,000, and individual tickets — offered by invitation only — are $75,000, a figure that has tripled over the last decade.

Corporate sponsors, including influence powerhouses like TikTok and Instagram, do kick in large donations, as do some celebrities. But some companies that buy tickets don’t always use them for themselves: Those seats are often passed on to A-listers, in hopes that their fame will rub off on the brands providing the ticket.

Nor is it a cheap party to throw. According to its federal nonprofit tax filing, last year’s Met Gala — which brought in more than $26 million — cost more than $6 million to mount, including more than $1.3 million on entertainment. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, stars of the film version of “Wicked,” performed at that event.

Such eye-popping numbers often don’t include the cost of scores of staff, ranging from catering to choreography, rentals to red carpets. For example, the 2023 gala for the Robin Hood Foundation, an anti-poverty group, counted more than 40 companies as vendors.

The announced take for their benefit — which Robin Hood has billed as “the world’s largest single-night fund-raiser” — was $61.4 million in 2023. But, like the Met Gala, it was pricey to stage: Robin Hood’s 2023 tax filings show some $14.2 million in expenses related to that event.

At the same time, that hefty $61.4 million figure does not actually sync with the foundation’s tax filings, which showed only $34.2 million raised at the 2023 gala. Asked about that discrepancy, the foundation said that the announced figure of $61.4 million included donations before the event and those inspired by it.

“The difference in the reported dollars raised is really one of classification,” said Kevin Thompson, a Robin Hood spokesman.

For the Met, the amount raised aligns with its tax filings, though those filings only reveal broad categories of spending.

P.R. Bonanza for Vogue

The Costume Institute event started in the autumn of 1948 as a midnight supper before becoming a splashy mainstay of the city’s gala season, which crescendos in May, before the lure of summer homes pulls the city’s wealthiest residents to the Hamptons, Nantucket and other upscale ports of call.

Its current iteration is dominated by Anna Wintour, the chief content officer of Condé Nast and the editor of Vogue, who has long been its primary creative force, building it into a powerhouse of public relations and profitability.

Ms. Wintour’s first gala as a co-chair came in 1995, before she effectively took the helm in 1999, fashioning a cross-pollination of famous names, famous brands and famous sponsors. And as the event’s popularity has grown, so has the hype surrounding it, with Vogue running a barrage of articles about the event in the weeks prior, about topics including its history, its political attendees and its “dress code rejectors.”

Though temporarily waylaid by Covid, the gala’s take has rapidly increased in recent years. In 2019, the event grossed about half of what it does now — some $15 million, per the Met’s tax filing.

By last May, the 2024 event was netting more — but costing more, too, with $6.4 million in expenses. Roughly put, the Met Gala raises $4 for every dollar spent. That ratio is roughly in line with other major city galas, according to tax documents, including the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Opera.

Ms. Wintour’s power over — and the secrecy surrounding — the event is legendary, said Amy Odell, author of the 2022 biography “Anna,” ranging from the guest list to the sponsors to the seating chart.

“She has control over every single aspect of it, right down to the ingredients in the food,” Ms. Odell said, adding, “I think that, for her, each year it’s like: ‘How can I top last year?’”

The gala is also a P.R. bonanza for Vogue itself: The publication runs the exclusive livestream from the red carpet, on the Fifth Avenue steps of the museum. (Instagram, which is also a financial backer of the event this year, is also flooded with photos and video of the attendees, and commentary — both kind and less so — about their various looks.)

Angela Goding, an experienced gala organizer, agreed, saying the Met Gala “sits outside of the gala universe as we know it,” in terms of extravagance and its “sometimes absurd, and sometimes sublime looks.”

But like all galas, the costs of all of those flourishes stack up, Ms. Goding said, noting that “galas are an antiquated model,” sometimes burdened by high ticket prices that make them inaccessible to all but deep-pocketed corporations, ultrarich individuals or friends of both. And even inside that cohort, there’s fierce competition among organizations.

“There are only so many fund-raisers that even the most privileged donor can find time to attend,” said Michael West, a senior vice president at the New York Council of Nonprofits.

There are also practical pitfalls, Ms. Goding said, including trying to make dinner for hundreds in what can sometimes be a makeshift kitchen. But, she added, “Let’s be real: We aren’t there for the food.”

Fund-raising veterans also say that it can be difficult to quantify a single gala’s success merely from its bottom line, saying it can encourage future giving.

Barbara Paxton, the director of BoardStrong, which consults with nonprofit organizations, said, “Would all those people be showing up and giving money to the Metropolitan Museum if they weren’t sitting next to Rihanna and ASAP Rocky? Probably not.”

She added: “Are galas the most efficient return on your investment? No. Having someone just write a check is. But as long as you’re not actually losing money, then you have to think about the trade-offs.”

And the Met Gala is most certainly not losing money, Ms. Goding said, if this year’s haul is any indication.

“It seems,” she said, “to be working out just fine.”

Katie Van Syckle, Vanessa Friedman and David A. Fahrenthold contributed reporting.