The Metropolitan Museum of Art Announces Its Fall/Winter 2026–27 Met Live Arts Season

(New York, July 30, 2026)—The Metropolitan Museum of Art today announced its 2026–27 fall/winter season of Met Live Arts, which will feature world premieres as well as new commissions envisioned specifically for galleries at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters as well as concerts in The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium.

This also marks the inaugural season of programming by Sarah Jones, Lulu C. and Anthony W. Wang Head of Live Arts, who joined the Museum in 2025. Highlights of the upcoming season include performances by Lykke Li, St. Vincent, Jason Isbell, Kingfish, Ayodele Casel, and Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, along with a series of holiday concerts at both The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters in December.

The 2026–27 season will feature programs that take place throughout the Museum’s most iconic spaces, including the Temple of Dendur, the Charles Engelhard Court, the Arms and Armor Court, and the Fuentidueña Chapel at The Met Cloisters. The season will also feature select performances created in dialogue with major exhibitions, including Musical Bodies (on view through September 27), which explores the relationship between musical instruments and the body, and Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous (on view October 4, 2026, through January 31, 2027), a milestone exhibition tracing the parallel lives and practices of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.

"The 2026–27 Met Live Arts season reflects an exciting evolution in how performance animates the Museum experience," said Max Hollein, The Met's Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “By bringing exceptional artists to The Met, these collaborations invite audiences to experience art spanning disciplines, cultures, and centuries in ways that are both innovative and deeply engaging. Like all our programming, the latest performance season reflects our commitment to fostering artistic exchange while building on the Museum’s longstanding legacy as a place where creative ideas continue to inspire new perspectives.”

"Met Live Arts exists to create encounters that can only happen at The Met," said Sarah Jones, The Met's Lulu C. and Anthony W. Wang Head of Live Arts. "Performance is the connective tissue of the Museum, bringing audiences into conversation with contemporary artistic voices in ways that spark curiosity, discovery, and shared experience. This season embraces artists whose work challenges expectations while transforming the Museum into a place of active exchange. Whether intimate or monumental, each performance is presented within the unique context of The Met, making the Museum itself an essential part of the artistic experience."

Met Live Arts opens the season with two performances that highlight the breadth of contemporary musical expression. On September 16, Swedish artist Lykke Li brings her newly released album, The Afterparty, to life in a one-of-a-kind performance. Later in the season on November 17, Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey and singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Black Belt Eagle Scout will share a double bill exploring contemporary takes on Indigenous musical traditions in celebration of Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month.

In advance of the spring 2027 opening of the Museum's new gallery celebrating the American guitar, Met Live Arts and the Department of Musical Instruments will introduce a new series, Guitar Icons, exploring the artistic, cultural, and historical significance of the guitar across musical traditions. The series begins on October 2 and 3, with acclaimed Mississippi blues guitarist Kingfish and several special guests whose performances will trace the instrument's role in the evolution of the blues. On February 2, Jason Isbell, one of today's greatest country songwriters, will take the stage alone for a rare and intimate solo performance. And later, on February 20, Grammy Award–winning musician and songwriter St. Vincent will be joined by keyboardist Rachel Eckroth for a powerful performance showcasing their genre-defying approach and collaborative artistry.

The season will also include two major dance premieres, both of which are planned in conjunction with special exhibitions. The award-winning tap artist and choreographer Ayodele Casel will offer the world premiere of a new work conceived in dialogue with the Musical Bodies exhibition. Featuring a slate of dynamic collaborators, including 2025 USA Solo Beatbox Champion Alex Sanchez, tap artist and sand dancer Qyunn Johnson, body percussionist Ryan Johnson, and others, the work uses rhythm, movement, and live performance to explore the body as a musical instrument. In January, experimental dancer-choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener bring their physical and conceptual dance language to one of the Museum's most iconic spaces, the Temple of Dendur, with a new work titled Rooms Within Rooms. Including live music by Charmaine Lee and media design by Jesse Stiles, the performance explores the roles that memory, description, and interpretation play in shaping our experience of movement.

Also in January, Sandbox Percussion and pianist Conor Hanick take over the Charles Engelhard Court in the American Wing to perform Christopher Cerrone’s Don’t Look Down, a concerto for prepared piano and percussion quartet. Mezzo-soprano Elspeth Davies joins for other works by Cerrone that expand the season’s dialogue between contemporary music, experimentation, and artistic innovation.

In December, Met Live Arts will celebrate the holiday season with several signature concerts, including a performance by New Orleans’s legendary Rebirth Brass Band, who will bring their city’s funky musical traditions to the Museum. Met Live Arts will also produce a series of choral concerts at The Met Cloisters with such ensembles as New York Polyphony and the Norwegian choral ensemble Trio Mediæval.

Met Live Arts encompasses both ticketed and free-with-Museum-admission performances that take place at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.

Met Live Arts 2026–27 Fall/Winter Performance Details:

Lykke Li
Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 7 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Fifteen years after Lykke Li first topped charts with her hit song “I Follow Rivers,” the Swedish star has officially entered her “existential era” with her latest album, The Afterparty (2026). Join Li for a special performance that brings The Afterparty to life in a one-of-a-kind setting. Don’t miss this dreamy evening of lush soundscapes, electric beats, and a singular voice’s exploration of the human psyche’s inner darkness.

Ticket Prices: $35–$130

Ayodele Casel
Saturday, September 19, 7 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Award-winning tap artist and choreographer Ayodele Casel moves in a language entirely her own, drawing on sources as eclectic as hip-hop and salsa to forge a signature rhythmic voice that animates her expressive, narrative-driven work. Join Casel and a remarkable lineup of collaborators, including a USA Solo Beatbox Champion, a sand dancer, and a body percussionist, for a special live performance that turns the body itself into an instrument.

Featuring:
Ayodele Casel, choreographer and tap artist
Torya Beard, director
Brandon Stirling Baker, lighting designer
Susan Hilferty, costume designer
Performers:
Alex Sanchez, beatboxer
Qyunn Johnson, tap artist and sand dancer
Ryan Johnson, body percussionist
Naomi Funaki, tap artist
Tony McPherson, poet
Hank Smith, tap artist
Crystal Monee Hall, singer and songwriter

This performance is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Musical Bodies.

Ticket Prices: $35–$110

Guitar Icons: Kingfish
Friday, October 2, and Saturday, October 3, 7 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Grammy-winning, Billboard chart–topping guitarist Christone "Kingfish" Ingram carries the torch for a new era of blues, honoring the musical spirit of his Mississippi Delta upbringing while pushing past the genre's borders into funk, soul, hip-hop, pop, and jazz. Now hear the blues like nowhere else, as Kingfish and his all-star band—joined by a few special guests—journey through the genre's cultural, historic, and artistic impact, featuring a historical instrument from The Met collection.

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s Department of Musical Instruments to mark the new gallery dedicated to celebrating the American guitar at The Met.

Ticket Prices: $35–$155

Morton Feldman Centenary Celebration
Met Live Arts celebrates the centenary of Morton Feldman, one of the 20th century's most important and influential minimalist composers, with two concerts on November 13 and 14.

Celebrating Morton Feldman: For Philip Guston
Friday, November 13, 3 p.m.
Robert Lehman Wing

Revolutionary composer Morton Feldman’s (1926–1987) epic four-and-a-half-hour work For Philip Guston (1984) reflects on the memory of his intense and occasionally tumultuous artistic relationship with trailblazing artist Philip Guston (1913–1980). Once close friends, the two drifted apart in the late 1960s when Guston turned away from abstraction to figurative art. After Guston's death, Feldman began to appreciate the freedom of his friend's artistic transformation and the affinities between their later works. Amid the elegant architecture of the Lehman wing atrium, experience Feldman's meditative colors at any point in the performance—or immerse yourself fully for the work's entire duration.

Featuring:
Alice Teyssier, flutes
Nathan Davis, percussion
Manuel Laufer Fair, piano and celesta

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Free with Museum Admission

Celebrating Morton Feldman: Violin and String Quartet
Saturday, November 14, 2 p.m.
The Met Cloisters

The meditative, time-stretching works of pioneering New York City composer Morton Feldman (1926–1987) endure 100 years after his birth for their muted beauty and radical innovation. Join today’s “leading new-music foursome” (The New York Times) JACK Quartet and violinist Keir GoGwilt for a performance of one of Feldman’s final works, Violin and String Quartet (1985). Don’t miss this expansive experiment in duration and instrumental conversation, set against the medieval splendor of the 12th-century Fuentidueña Chapel at The Met Cloisters.

Ticket Price: $70

Black Belt Eagle Scout and Joe Rainey
Tuesday, November 17, 7 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Presented in celebration of Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month, this double bill features two artists redefining their ancestral traditions. Joe Rainey opens the evening with his take on the Pow Wow musical style—descended from Indigenous singing that has been heard for centuries in and around modern-day Minnesota—sampling recordings that layer and remix slices of his musical life into a singular psychedelic sound world. Then, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Black Belt Eagle Scout and her band take the stage with a signature alt-rock sound that channels the pride, strength, gratitude, and healing of her ancestral Pacific Northwest homeland, the territory of the Swinomish/Coast Salish people.

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s celebration of Native American and Indigenous Heritage Month.

Ticket Prices: $35–$80

Holiday Series

New York Polyphony
Saturday, December 5, 2 and 4 p.m.
Fuentidueña Chapel, The Met Cloisters

The winter holidays at The Met Cloisters aren’t complete without voices echoing off the space’s resplendent stone halls. Celebrate the 20th anniversary of acclaimed quartet New York Polyphony—hailed as “vocal ensemble perfection” (Classics Today)—with a performance that spans a millennium of seasonal music in the 12th-century Fuentidueña Chapel, one of New York City’s most resonant spaces. Make this peaceful performance part of your holiday festivities.

Ticket Price: $95

Trio Mediæval
Sunday, December 6, 2 and 4 p.m.
Fuentidueña Chapel, The Met Cloisters

Hear the crystalline voices of Trio Mediæval, the Grammy-nominated Norwegian vocal ensemble whose vast repertoire stretches from the earliest sacred and folk traditions to brand-new works written especially for them. Don’t miss this special holiday performance bridging old and new, set in one of New York City’s most sonically satisfying spaces: the glorious 12th-century Fuentidueña Chapel at The Met Cloisters.

Ticket Price: $95

Rebirth Brass Band
Saturday, December 12, 7 p.m. and Sunday, December 13, 2 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

For more than four decades, Rebirth Brass Band has been innovating the musical traditions of New Orleans, weaving in the traditional brass sounds of the Big Easy with influences of funk, jazz, soul, and hip-hop. Now the famed band brings their unmatched energy to The Met for the winter holidays. Welcome the season with these merry, groove-heavy performances.

Ticket Prices: $35–$80

Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener: Rooms within Rooms
January TBA
Temple of Dendur

Dancer-choreographers Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener bring their bold and instinctive choreographic language to the Temple of Dendur with Rooms within Rooms, a site-responsive work featuring live music by Charmaine Lee and media design by Jesse Stiles. A cast of intrepid dancers scrapes the visual landscape of the many rooms of the museum to systematically layer action, language, and image, past and future.

This performance is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous.

Ticket Price: $70

JACK Plays JACK
Friday, January 15, 6 and 7:30 p.m.
European Paintings 1250–1800, Gallery 638

Over the last 20 years, JACK Quartet has cemented their group as one of “contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles” (The New York Times). Hear the fearless quartet premiere a new work by JACK violinist Christopher Otto in conjunction with the special installation Ecologies of Painting (Gallery 638), a provocative exploration of how artists shape cultural conceptions of the natural world. Plus, hear music by JACK violinist Austin Wulliman and other pieces by Otto in this intimate performance in The Met’s European Paintings galleries.

This performance is part of The Met’s programming for Ecologies of Painting within Look Again: European Paintings 1300–1800.

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s Department of European Paintings.

Free with Museum Admission

Don’t Look Down: Sandbox Percussion Plays Christopher Cerrone
Wednesday, January 27, and Thursday, January 28, 7 p.m.
Charles Engelhard Court

Join the Grammy-winning quartet Sandbox Percussion, pianist Conor Hanick, and mezzo-soprano Elspeth Davis for an immersive portrait of composer Christopher Cerrone. Experience the wide-ranging sounds of Don’t Look Down, an “accidental diary” of the COVID-19 pandemic that pairs a prepared piano—where bolts, mutes, and other objects alter the instrument’s strings—with both traditional percussion and found objects. Don’t miss this bold testament to the power of music and collaboration, plus more works by Cerrone that explore space, sound, and rhythm, set in The Met’s grand Charles Engelhard Court.

Ticket Price: $70

Guitar Icons: Jason Isbell
Tuesday, February 2, 7 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Jason Isbell’s thoughtful music, a mix of Americana and country with a tinge of folk rock, has earned six Grammy Awards over the past decade. His reflective, poignant lyrics speak to the soul of Southern identity in the 21st century. Join Isbell for a one-of-a-kind solo performance that features a historical instrument from The Met collection.

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s Department of Musical Instruments to mark the new gallery dedicated to celebrating the American guitar at The Met.

Ticket Prices: $35–$155

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah: Sound Carved from Legend
Monday, February 8, and Tuesday, February 9, 7 p.m.
Temple of Dendur

Five-time Grammy nominated musician, composer, producer, storyteller, chieftain, and innovator Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah’s remarkable musical palette stretches jazz’s conventions to encompass a wide spectrum of musical forms and cultures. As part of The Met’s celebration of Black History Month, Chief Adjuah transforms the Temple of Dendur with a newly commissioned project that explores Black, Brown, and Maroon histories in the United States. Don’t miss this trailblazing performer as he fills one of New York’s most majestic spaces with brand-new music.

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s celebration of Black History Month.

Ticket Price: $70

Guitar Icons: St. Vincent
Saturday, February 20, 7 p.m.
The Grace Rainey Rogers

From her six Grammy Awards to her recent ranking as number 26 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, St. Vincent has constantly refined the sonic identity and expressive possibilities of the electric guitar. Now, for one night only, join one of the 21st century’s most intriguing musical presences for a special evening featuring a historical instrument from The Met collection.

This performance is presented in conjunction with The Met’s Department of Musical Instruments to mark the new gallery dedicated to celebrating the American guitar at The Met.

Ticket Prices: $35–$155

Jonny Greenwood: 112 Years of Reverb
Saturday, February 27, 12–8 p.m.
Arms and Armor Court

How do we wrap our heads around all the music, sounds, and voices that have resonated inside a building that has existed for decades? Rock musician and film composer Jonny Greenwood, most renowned as a member of the band Radiohead, channels voices of old into his X Years of Reverb—here, with a nod to The Met building’s 112 years of history. The highly accomplished organists James McVinnie and Eliza McCarthy bring Greenwood’s work to life, treating the Museum’s Thomas Appleton pipe organ from 1830 as a time machine connecting us with the sounds that past visitors would have heard.

This adventurous, spellbinding marathon will take place over eight hours in the Arms and Armor Court.

Ticket Prices: $65–$80

All ticket prices include fees.

Program Credits

Leadership support for Met Live Arts is provided by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art.

Lykke Li
This performance is made possible by Per Skarstedt.

Ayodele Casel
The performance is made possible in part by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Guitar Icons: Kingfish
This performance is made possible by David Katz and the Abraham J. and Phyllis Katz Foundation, and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Celebrating Morton Feldman: For Philip Guston
This performance is made possible by the Guston Family Fund.

Black Belt Eagle Scout and Joe Rainey
This performance is made possible by the Clara Lloyd Weber Fund.

New York Polyphony (Holiday Concerts)
This performance is made possible by The Patterson Fund.

Rebirth Brass Band
This performance is made possible by the Mary P. Oenslager Foundation Fund.

Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener: Rooms Within Rooms
Additional support for this performance is provided by the Vanguard Council.

JACK Quartet Plays JACK Quartet
This performance is made possible by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation.

Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah: Sound Carved from Legend
This performance is made possible by the Adrienne Arsht Fund for Resilience through Art.

Guitar Icons: St. Vincent
This performance is made possible by David Katz and the Abraham J. and Phyllis Katz Foundation.

Guitar Icons: Jason Isbell
This performance is made possible by David Katz and the Abraham J. and Phyllis Katz Foundation.

Image:Lykke Li, photo by Paul Scala