How much does it cost to attend the 2024 Met Gala? Why this year’s event is set to be the messiest one yet

By Charlie Sawyer

Published May 2, 2024 at 11:09 AM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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Image courtesy of David Fisher from Shutterstock

While I may not exactly be the Carrie Bradshaw of my generation, I can appreciate the importance of fashion. And I can definitely recognise the legacy of the Met Gala. Taking place on the first Monday in May each year, the Met Gala is one of the most important events in any celebrity’s social calendar. A-listers such as Zendaya, Rihanna, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, and Kim Kardashian all flock to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to grace those iconic steps and shmooze Miss Anna Wintour herself.

And let’s be real, the prestigious and glamorous social gathering has been the setting for some of the most iconic fashion moments:

But for it to be an Explained By a Blonde article, there has to be a sprinkling of tea—the gossip kind, not the Earl Grey kind. So, enough with the outfits and red carpet moments, let’s get into exactly why we’re discussing the Met Gala today.

Well, for those of us who like to sit at home and judge the choices of others, there’s a natural curiosity about exactly how much money a ticket to the Met Gala costs. Plus, there’s the recent (and incredibly juicy) controversy surrounding Vogue’s former Editor-in-Chief’s multi-million dollar deal with TikTok… Let’s get into it.

According to Time Magazine, a single ticket to the Met Gala could set you back a whopping $50,000. However, it won’t be Blake or Ryan shelling out the pennies. Typically, it’s the designers who purchase entire tables at the Gala in order to fill the seats with celebrities wearing their chosen clothes. And how much would a whole table cost, you might be wondering? A measly $300,000. 

Now, the cost of a Met Gala ticket has been steadily increasing over the past few years. In 2018, The New York Times reported that a ticket cost $30,000, with the price of an entire table set at around $275,000.

And if we go even further back to ancient times (aka, 2001) it would cost people only $3,500 for a ticket to New York’s most prestigious gala.

The 2023 Met Gala was shrouded in a hefty ton of controversy. Specifically, there was a lot of criticism surrounding the theme of last year’s event: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty. Of course, Lagerfeld was the creative director of Chanel before his passing in 2019. The fashion icon was incredibly problematic, notoriously and shamelessly publicising his distaste for women who did not fit the Eurocentric beauty standards. Indeed, Lagerfeld was explicitly fatphobic, racist, and misogynistic on a number of occasions.

However, it’s not the theme that has people in a tizzy this year—to be honest, I’m not sure how anyone could get angry over ‘The Garden of Time’. Instead, it seems as though Wintour is facing criticism for deciding to cut a multi-million dollar deal with TikTok, a move some have seen as divisive considering President Joe Biden’s plans to potentially ban the app within the next year.

Shou Chew, the CEO of TikTok, will be joining Wintour on the red carpet at the Met Gala and sources such as The Business of Fashion (BOF) have deemed this collaboration a PR disaster. It’s probably getting mega-heated over at Vogue.

A source who spoke to Page Six revealed that many of the stars attending the gala have ties with Universal Music Group (UMG). As we all know, UMG recently prevented its artists from having their music on TikTok due to a standoff over licensing fees, accusing the app of “bullying” for only wanting to pay a “fraction” of the rate other platforms do for its music.

Understandably, people are speculating that it might be a tad awks on the red carpet come 6 May when some pretty angry artists are faced with quite a few very loud and proud metaphorical TikTok sponsorship banners.

Either way, the 2024 Met Gala is shaping up to be quite the spectacle. And I personally cannot wait to watch the drama from the safety of my own bed.