LeBron James drops out of Met Gala despite being honorary chair

The 2025 Met Gala is going to be short one G.O.A.T.

LeBron James announced on Monday afternoon that he wouldn’t be attending this year’s edition of the annual fundraising gala, despite being named one of the evening’s honorary chairs.

“Unfortunately because of my knee injury I sustained at the end of the season I won’t be able to attend the Met Gala in NY tonight as so many people have been asking and congratulating me on,” the NBA legend wrote on social media, hours before the first stars were set to hit the red carpet at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Hate to miss an historical event! My beautiful powerful Queen will be there holding the castle down as she always has done!”

Vogue, which has organized the Met Gala as a charity fundraiser for the Met’s Costume Institute every year since 1999 announced in October that James would co-chair the 2025 edition alongside Colman Domingo, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, British racecar driver Lewis Hamilton, and the magazine’s longtime Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour.

The invite was a particular honor for James, who has not previously attended the event, which has in recent years become one of the fashion world’s most illustrious events. Though the L.A. Lakers’ forward will have to wait another year for his first Met, he happily indicated that Savannah, his wife of 12 years, would attend in his absence.

After suffering a bad fall in the fourth quarter of a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves on April 30, an MRI revealed that James had sustained a Grade 2 MCL sprain in his left knee.

That sort of injury generally entails a three-to-five week recovery period, per ESPN.

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In addition to helping fund the Costume Institute, the Met Gala also serves as the kickoff to the museum’s spring exhibition. The title of that exhibition traditionally dictates the theme for attendees’ outfits, with this year being “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.”

Inspired by guest curator Monica L. Miller’s 2009 book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, this year’s attendees are encouraged to “explore concepts that define Black dandyism,” per a statement from Miller the Met shared in October.

“Fashion and dress have been used in a contest of power and aesthetics for Black people from the time of enslavement to the present, and dandyism has long served as a vehicle through which one can manipulate the relationship between clothing, identity, and power,” she wrote.