THE APOLLO CIRCLE BENEFIT

The Apollo Circle Benefit is the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s yearly black-tie evening for its young patrons, held on a Thursday in mid-October from nine until midnight at the Met on Fifth Avenue: cocktails, a private viewing of one of the season’s exhibitions, and dancing in the Great Hall and in the Temple of Dendur, for guests aged twenty-one to forty-five. Each year takes its theme, and its dress, from an exhibition then on.

The dance floor is an Egyptian temple, completed in 10 B.C.

The Circle

The Apollo Circle is the Met’s group of young patrons of the arts, art-lovers in their twenties and thirties. A membership costs $1,500 a year and admits up to two members aged twenty-one to thirty-nine; the Patron level, at $3,500, runs to forty-five.

Its money goes to the curators, educators and conservators of the Museum, as a reliable source of funding, and what the benefit raises goes to the Museum’s general operating support, which the Met calls “essential unrestricted support”. Patrons are asked each spring to a garden party at The Met Cloisters, and may visit the Museum on Wednesdays, when it is closed to the public.

The benefit follows the exhibitions. In 2023 it was “Une Nuit À Paris”, with a private viewing of the Manet and Degas exhibition and an ending in the Temple of Dendur under coloured lights, with a DJ. In 2025 it was “Into the Darkroom: Shadows, Shapes & Fantasies”, after the exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream, and more than seven hundred came in black tie.

The Evening

The doors open at nine. There is a pre-reception for those who have taken a VIP package, and then the evening proper: cocktails made for the night, the exhibition opened for a private viewing, and music in two places, the Great Hall and the Temple of Dendur. It ends at midnight.

The dress is black tie, and it is themed: each year the Met publishes the code with the exhibition it is to be inspired by.

The Met photographs the evening, and coming is taken as consent to the use of one’s likeness. A host committee stands behind each year’s benefit.

The 2026 benefit is on Thursday 15 October, after the exhibition Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous, with its dress “Black-tie, inspired by the works of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock”. Haseeb Iqbal plays in the Great Hall and Bea Hardy at the Temple of Dendur. The host committee includes Samantha Kirby and Rob McSwiney and Charlotte Pinkard Shapiro and David Shapiro; the evening is made possible by The Monica and Douglas Taylor Foundation, with sponsorship from LoveShackFancy.

What to Know

It is held on a Thursday in mid-October: 17 October in 2024, 16 October in 2025, 15 October in 2026. The 2027 date has not been announced.

A ticket costs $385 for a member of the Apollo Circle and $485 for anyone else. A year’s membership with two tickets is $1,885, and a year at the Patron level with two tickets $3,885. A member may buy four tickets at the member’s rate, and nothing is refunded. VIP packages are arranged through the Apollo Circle’s office at the Met.

Black tie, as the Met publishes it, with a nod to the year’s theme.

The Met stands at 1000 Fifth Avenue, at 82nd Street.

The mistake is to bring a guest over forty-five. The benefit is for guests aged twenty-one to forty-five, and the Circle’s own membership stops at thirty-nine.

The Court

The Apollo Circle Benefit is not the Court’s own. Tickets, with the VIP package and its pre-reception, are sought on a member’s behalf where the member is within the Met’s age, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in the city for a member coming from away, and the table afterward.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.