NEW YORK, NY.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced today the fall and winter 2025–26 MetLiveArts season, which will feature world premiere performances and commissions created specifically for the Museum’s galleries as well as concerts in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. This upcoming season will highlight a significant number of new works created by female artists, including composers and musicians Gabriela Ortiz, Wu Man, Hanzhi Wang, Emily Wells, Layale Chaker, and Leilehua Lanzilotti. Throughout the 2025–26 season, The Met collection and galleries, including the new galleries for the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania and special exhibitions like Man Ray: When Objects Dream, will provide inspiration for several new performances.

Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO, said, “This season of Live Arts will bring The Met's collection to life through music, dance, and performance art created by an array of international superstars and emerging artists. We are thrilled to invite audiences in to experience The Met’s galleries in entirely new and exhilarating ways.”

The 2025–26 season will begin on September 9, with Wu Man and The Knights performing a program that celebrates repertoire for the solo pipa and features Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Pipa. The season will continue in October with George Lewis and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) performing Jennie C. Jones’s graphic scores in conjunction with her 2025 Roof Garden Commission, Ensemble. November begins with Grammy Award–winning composer Gabriela Ortiz’s Canta la Piedra-Tetluikan for Roomful of Teeth, with text by Nauhatl poet Mardonio Carballo, co-commissioned with Carnegie Hall to celebrate the new galleries for the arts of the ancient Americas. This will also include a performance of a new arrangement of Ortiz’s Kauyumari by Roomful of Teeth and the Mexican choral ensemble Coro Acardenchado and selections from the endangered Mexican canto cardenche folk tradition by Coro Acardenchado. Also this fall and winter, there will be events inspired by the special exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream, including live music by SQÜRL (Carter Logan and Jim Jarmusch) for four films by Man Ray recently restored in 4K, and the premiere of an evening-length work by artist Alex Da Corte along with his collaborator, the electronic composer and musician Emily Wells.

This season will also include JACK Quartet as the Museum’s 2025–26 Quartet in Residence. New York City’s foremost new-music quartet will create a season of new and transformative concert experiences beginning in December.

MetLiveArts performances will be both ticketed and free with Museum admission and take place in person at The Met Fifth Avenue or at The Met Cloisters. The Museum’s popular Date Night at The Met evenings, held every Friday and Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m., will continue to feature live music by ETHEL & Friends and occasional pop-up performances throughout the galleries.

In May 2025, The Met announced that Sarah Jones has been appointed as Lulu C. and Anthony W. Wang Head of Live Arts. She will begin her role at The Met in August.