Amal Clooney Will Host the 2018 Met Gala with Rihanna—and the Theme Is Controversial

The next Met Gala may feel like a ways away, but planning is well under way. And now we have the first news of the 2018 theme.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Wednesday morning that next year’s Met Gala theme will be “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” The distinctly religious theme marks a departure from last year’s “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons ” theme, which centered around a specific designer rather than something more conceptual.

In order to help bring the theme to life, the Met has enlisted the help of honorary gala chairs, and they couldn’t be more A-list. Rihanna, Donatella Versace, and Amal Clooney will be lending their vision to the event, and they seem like the perfect fit.

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The Versace brand is well known for its use of Catholic iconography and will also sponsor the “Heavenly Bodies” museum exhibit, which will be open to the public from May 10 to Oct. 8, 2018. Rihanna is known for her standout looks at the Met Gala each year (seriously her avant-garde look last year couldn’t have been cooler), and Clooney has dressed impeccably at the event before as well.

The New York Times reports that an invitation to the event will be extended to Cardinal Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, but no word yet on whether or not he’ll make an appearance. With a religious theme at the center of the event and exhibition for the first time, the brains behind the experience are well aware that it might come across as more provocative than in the past.

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“Every show we do at the Costume Institute has that potential,” the “Heavenly Bodies” exhibit curator Andrew Bolton told the Times. “This one perhaps more than any other. But the focus is on a shared hypothesis about what we call the Catholic imagination and the way it has engaged artists and designers and shaped their approach to creativity, as opposed to any kind of theology or sociology. Beauty has often been a bridge between believers and unbelievers.”

The 2018 Met Gala will take place on May 7, 2018, so mark your calendars now.