Billy Porter Hasn’t ‘Been Invited’ to Met Gala Since 2019

Billy Porter has made his peace with the 2026 Met Gala not being on his calendar this year.

“I’m not going. I have not been invited,” Porter, 56, claimed on SiriusXM’s Bevelations on Wednesday, April 22. “I haven’t been invited back since 2019. That’s the only time I’ve ever gone, and the only time I’ve ever been invited. I was invited by Ryan Murphy that year.”

Porter attended Fashion’s Biggest Night in May 2019 in celebration of the “Camp: Notes on Fashion” exhibit, where the Pose actor entered New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on a cushioned chariot and dressed as a golden phoenix.

“Last year was Black dandyism, and I was not invited,” Porter alleged on Wednesday. “I’m just going to throw that out there, [but] I’m good. The reality is, when people ask me, you need to know I was not invited and I’m good.”

Related: Why Billy Porter Is Skipping the 2024 Met Gala: ‘Daddy’s Tired’

Mike Marsland/WireImage Billy Porter will not be attending the Met Gala on Monday, May 6, to grieve his mother, Cloerinda Jean Johnson, who died in February. “I just lost my mom,” Porter, 54, told E! News at the TIME100 Gala on Thursday, April 25. “I have to take care of myself, so I’m doing that. […]

He continued, “I don’t go to places where I’m not welcome. I’ve earned the invitation, and it’s OK that it hasn’t happened [again] because there’s a level that I’ve reached that doesn’t require validation from the outside. I’m going to sit and live in that because it helps keep me sane, too.”

The Met Gala returns to the Big Apple on Monday, May 4, for an exhibit honoring a “Costume Art” theme. The annual benefit will be cochaired by Beyoncé, Venus Williams, Nicole Kidman and Anna Wintour.

“It will be transformative for our department, but I also think it’s going to be transformative to fashion more generally — the fact that an art museum like The Met is actually giving a central location to fashion,” museum curator Andrew Bolton told Vogue in November 2025 of the dress code. “[The gala addresses] the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection, adding that is what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body.”

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The Met Gala attendance list is famously kept quiet until the big day. It’s long been rumored that Wintour, 76, and the Vogue team curates the exclusive guest list.

“Each one is very different,” Wintour told Good Morning America in May 2025. “This one has been, I think, particularly meaningful and emotional and has a real heightened sense of purpose, because of the times that we’re living in.”

Us Weekly has reached out for comment.