Meryl Streep will skip the 2026 Met Gala, her representative said Monday morning, keeping alive one of fashion’s most durable absences. The actor has been invited for years, but has never attended, and that will not change this year.
The representative told People magazine that Streep “has never attended” the annual event and that “it has never quite been her scene,” despite her appreciation for Vogue, Anna Wintour and the kind of imagination the gala rewards. The comment came as Met Gala co-chairs Venus Williams and Naomi Osaka hit the red carpet for the annual event on Monday.
The news lands as Streep continues a press run tied to The Devil Wears Prada 2, which premiered May 1 and brings her back as Miranda Priestly, the Runway magazine editor-in-chief first made famous in the 2006 cult classic. Priestly’s crisp authority was long understood as being inspired by Wintour, who runs the Met Gala, and the two women have kept up a friendship since the first film turned into a cultural touchstone.
That connection is what has kept Streep’s absence from the gala in the conversation for so long. She was even announced in 2020 as a co-chair alongside Wintour, only for that year’s event to be canceled after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. For a moment, it looked like the red carpet might finally get one of fashion’s most recognizable fictional editors and one of Hollywood’s most decorated stars in the same frame. It never happened.
Streep’s own relationship with fashion has only recently begun to look less distant. On April 8, she attended her first fashion show in Milan during Milan Fashion Week and said, “I was so excited,” adding that she had never been to a fashion show in her real life and found it “really exciting” and “so theatrical.” The remark fit the pattern her representative described: interest, admiration and distance, all at once.
That is why Monday’s confirmation matters. Streep is not passing on the Met Gala because of a scheduling glitch or a missed invitation. She has been invited for years and still does not see the event as hers. For the gala, that leaves one of its longest-running what-ifs intact. For Streep, it confirms that even as her Prada sequel puts her back in the middle of fashion conversation, the biggest night on the calendar remains a world she prefers to watch from outside.