What Happens to the 2027 Met Gala Now That Galliano Has Exited?

The Costume Institute that hosts the Met Gala has never, in its history, pulled a show it had already announced to the public. That changed this week, when John Galliano: Horizons, the retrospective exhibition and theme for next year's Met Gala, was scrapped within a month after its unveiling. Now the museum has a bigger problem than one uncomfortable exhibition. It has five months to figure out what, if anything, replaces it.

In stead of the Costume Institute posting a public announcement, Galliano broke the news himself, in an Instagram post on Monday morning: after "much reflection and discussion," he wrote, "it is best for the exhibition not to take place at this time."

What Happened

After a month of backlash and mixed opinions around the upcoming Met Gala, designer John Galliano posted on Instagram: “I remain fully accountable for the pain caused by my words in the past, particularly the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities, and I remain deeply sorry. I understand that meaningful atonement is not achieved through an exhibition, institutional recognition or a single public gesture. It is a continuing responsibility, demonstrated through listening, learning and one’s conduct over time.

“I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute. I also recognize and respect that an exhibition honoring my work would be painful for some.”

The Met confirmed the decision within the hour. Director and CEO Max Hollein described it as a mutual call, reached after direct conversations with Galliano himself. Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton echoed the sentiment: he recognised the pain and concern the exhibition had caused, and said he supported the decision after internal discussion.

John Galliano is one of the most respected designers in contemporary fashion world. All that came to a halt in February 2011, when videos of his drunken tirade at a Parisian bar in went viral, showing the designer tell a group of strangers he loved Hitler and that their families should have been gassed.

A second racial outburst that October led to a lawsuit in a Paris court, which found him guilty on two counts of public insults based on origin, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity. He served no jail time, but Christian Dior, where he had spent fifteen years as creative director, fired him within days of the video surfacing.

Galliano is one of the earliest and most week known example of cancel culture in the fashion world. The backlash the followed caused him to withdraw from public life for two years, resurfacing years later at Maison Margiela, where he spent a decade rebuilding a case for his talent. Along the way, he met with rabbis and Jewish community leaders, several of whom later acknowledged the effort publicly. In 2024, he revisited the whole episode and apologised for it once again in the documentary High and Low: John Galliano.

The Cancelled Met Gala

Had the retrospective gone ahead, Galliano would have become only the third living designer ever given a solo Costume Institute show, after Yves Saint Laurent in 1983 and Rei Kawakubo in 2017. Perhaps, the rarefied company that made the premise harder to defend once the objections start.

Beyond the online backlash over the Met's decision to honour him, the decision was not appreated by many in the industry either. Reportedly, another cause of the cancellation was the sponsors and trustees quitting the Met Gala over the choice of the next theme.

There's also a wrinkle in the calendar that made this cancellation less optional than it appeared: the Met Gala's usual slot, the first Monday in May, falls on Yom HaShoah in 2027, the day of Holocaust remembrance. Holding a Galliano-themed gala on this date was never going to survive scrutiny, and reports had already stated that organisers are weighing whether to move the event to a different date.

The Met Gala has always been a controversial event, with its excesses often being criticised as tone deaf. When Karl Lagerfeld was named the 2023 honouree, old remarks of him dismissing the #MeToo movement, refugees and larger bodies resurfaced and drew heavy criticism; the show still opened on schedule. Earlier this year, the gala was panned after Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez were announced as its lead benefactors.

So, Will There Be A Met Gala Next Year?

Technically, yes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has said a new theme for the Costume Institute's Spring 2027 exhibition and the gala built around it will be announced later. However, it takes a full year for the Met to arrange an exhibition on this scale. The Galliano show was slated to run from May 9, 2027 to January 9, 2028. The fiasco put the Costume Department four months back on schedule.

Until then, fashion's decade-long argument over whether a body of work this influential can be separated from the man who made it remains exactly where it started: unresolved, and now missing its central exhibit.