08-05-2025
Fact Check: Here's what we know about rumors Met Gala co-chair Anna Wintour banned Trump from attending 2025 event
Claim:
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour banned U.S. President Donald Trump from the 2025 Met Gala.
Rating:
Context:
Anna Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chief and long-time co-chair of the Met Gala, in 2017 named Trump as a person she would "never invite back" to the prestigious event. It remains unclear whether Wintour's remarks amounted to a formal ban. Regardless, we found no evidence that Trump has attended a Met Gala since 2012.
In May 2025, following that year's edition of the Met Gala, a charity fundraiser event the fashion magazine Vogue organizes for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, claims (archived) circulated that gala co-host and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour banned U.S. President Donald Trump from the event.
In a TikTok video liked more than 200,000 times at the time of this writing, Dash Dobrofsky, host of the podcast "The Gen Z Perspective," said:
Donald Trump was banned from the Met Gala, which he used to attend in the 90s and early 2000s but after he became president and showed how horrible he was, Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, decided to ban Donald Trump permanently from the gala, which I think is hilarious and I love that she did that.
The claim also appeared on X (archived), Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers messaged us to ask if it was true that Trump was banned from the Met Gala.
While it remains unclear whether Vogue keeps an official list of people banned from the Met Gala — and, if so, whether Trump is on it — it is true that Trump hasn't attended the Met Gala since at least 2017. That year, Wintour appeared on James Corden's "Late Late Show" and named Trump as someone she would "never invite back" to the event.
Trump has previously attended the Met Gala: The most recent photos of him on Getty Images, a reputable picture agency that covers the event, are from 2012. Given the above, we rate this claim mostly true.
A spokesperson for Condé Nast, the media company that owns Vogue, said, "We never discuss guest list or speculation around it on record." We also reached out to the White House to ask if it could confirm the ban and whether Trump received an invitation to the 2025 Met Gala.
Regardless of the existence of an actual ban, Trump was not in Wintour's good books in 2017. Wintour, who has been editor-in-chief of fashion magazine Vogue since 1988, is an unavoidable figure at the Met Gala, having chaired all but two events since 1995. According to Wintour biographer Amy Odell, Wintour writes the guest list for each year's event herself.
In October 2017, Wintour appeared on Corden's show and Corden asked, "Who would you never invite back to the Met Gala?" Wintour responded, "Donald Trump."
A look back at Vogue red-carpet compilations from 2017 to 2025 shows no sign of Trump at any Met Gala since Wintour's "Late Late Show" appearance.
A search of the reputable picture agency Getty Images' database, which usually covers the event, showed that the most recent picture of Trump at a Met Gala was from 2012. Getty Images' oldest photo of Trump at a Met Gala was from 1985 and showed Trump accompanied by his first wife Ivana Trump. Current first lady Melania Trump started appearing in Met Gala photos alongside Trump in 2003, and did so consistently until 2012.
Snopes also reported on the authenticity of a video claiming to show Anna Wintour explaining why she banned Trump from Met Gala events as well as a video that allegedly showed Trump discussing such a ban.
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