Taylor Swift Closes the Academy Museum Gala With a Pixar Song

Taylor Swift closed the sixth Academy Museum Gala on Oct. 17 with a four-song set for film workers and academy voters. The Los Angeles fundraiser for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures raised more than $14 million.

She arrived in custom Dior by Jonathan Anderson, then sang her Toy Story 5 original “I Knew It, I Knew You” on a night that had just honored John Carpenter, Charlize Theron and Colman Domingo.

A Songwriter Closed a Night for Filmmakers

This was Swift’s first Academy Museum Gala, and the museum did not give her an award. It gave her the last slot, after three film honors, in a room the night’s own recaps described as packed with academy voters.

Amy Homma, director and president of the Academy Museum and Academy Collection, announced Swift as the performer on Oct. 8. Homma put the booking next to the museum’s job, celebrating and keeping cinema, not next to a concert calendar.

We are thrilled to welcome her to this year’s gala and look forward to her performance to close a wonderful evening of honoring three extraordinary filmmakers and supporting the Academy Museum’s mission to celebrate and preserve cinema.

Amy Homma, director and president, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, Oct. 8 announcement

Rolex remains the exclusive presenting partner and a founding supporter. Tom Ford, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw co-chaired. Homma opened the program with a look back at the museum’s first five years, and trustee Olivier de Givenchy offered the toast.

The décor followed The Horror Show, the museum’s new exhibition on decades of horror filmmaking. That is the part of the night the carpet photos do not carry. The program was built as a film house asking for money, then handing a pop songwriter the microphone.

Carpenter, Theron and Domingo Took the Honors

Honorees had been named on Aug. 13. Carpenter received the Luminary Award, given for work that has widened what filmmaking can do. Theron received the Icon Award. Domingo received the Vantage Award, which the museum gives to an artist pushing against the usual stories cinema tells.

THE NIGHT’S THREE AWARDS

Jamie Lee Curtis spoke first about horror, then brought Rodriguez on to honor Carpenter, the filmmaker and composer behind Halloween. Weaver, a three-time Oscar nominee, presented Theron. After dinner by guest chef Antonia Lofaso and Wolfgang Puck Catering, Judd Apatow introduced Ford, who handed Domingo the Vantage Award.

Conan O’Brien then walked Swift on. The sequence matters because it is how the museum ordered the night: three film careers, a meal, then a pop set sold as the close, not as the point of the invitations.

The Dior Gown Came From Her Wedding Designer

On the carpet, Swift, 36, wore a strapless ice blue pleated silk gown by Anderson, Dior’s creative director, with a crystal bow at the chest, a drop-waist skirt and a train. Joseph Cassell Falconer styled it with Aquazzura shoes. Her hair sat in a loosely curled, side-swept lob, with winged liner and a light pink lip.

Anderson also made the custom Dior couture wedding dress she wore when she married Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden on July 3. Photos of that gown have still not gone out. The gala dress did the public work for the same partnership, which is why so much of the talk after the carpet stopped at the silhouette and never got to the set.

Kelce was not with her. She posed alone, then went inside.

THE CHOPARD SET

• The earrings: Platinum chandeliers set with 32.40 carats of diamonds, from the Haute Joaillerie collection.
• The ring: 18k gold set with 5.78 carats of diamonds.
• The bracelet: Platinum set with 5.04 carats of diamonds.

She later changed into a sparkling midnight-blue gown for the performance. The carpet look is the one that moved. The public read it as a princess ballgown and as a sequel to a wedding dress they have not been shown, a Speak Now-era shape with Anderson’s name on the label.

What Taylor Swift Sang at the Academy Museum Gala?

Swift sang four songs and did not add a fifth. The short set mixed two catalogue hits with a live debut and the Pixar original, and it stayed in the room. The museum has announced no broadcast and no stream.

THE FOUR SONGS

• Blank Space: One of two older hits in the set, from 2014.
• Love Story: Phone clips from the floor show guests including Joey King and Hunter Schafer during the song.
• The Fate of Ophelia: The first live performance of the track from The Life of a Showgirl.
• I Knew It, I Knew You: The Toy Story 5 original, sung to a room that included academy voters.

Inside, she also found Sabrina Carpenter, Joey King and Cara Delevingne. Dakota Johnson and Elle Fanning were photographed with her; Colin Farrell was on the guest list. Johnson and Farrell had just starred in her self-directed “Patient Zero” video, which she premiered when she took the first Artist Director Honors at the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards. The gala put those film people in the same building as the song she wrote for a Pixar cowgirl.

The Toy Story Song Enters Oscar Season

“I Knew It, I Knew You” is the original song for Toy Story 5, written and produced with Jack Antonoff and built around Jessie, the cowgirl whose story runs back to Toy Story 2. Disney posted the single on June 5. The film opened in theaters on June 19.

It became Swift’s 15th No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first of those 15 to come from a movie, and the first Pixar song to top that chart. It is only the third song from a Disney movie to do so. In the chorus she sings, “But I knew it, I knew you.”

Swift said she wrote it the day she saw the film. In a video from that afternoon she described leaving an 11 a.m. screening, catching “the songwriter zoomies,” and going home to write the end-credit song, with vocals still happening at 6:57 p.m. because Bob Iger and “Tom from Pixar” were due in two hours. “I think this is one of the most fun days of my life,” she said.

The song is so deeply connected to Toy Story. So much so that on first listen, it instantly felt like it had always belonged there, like a long-lost family member. It was kismet.

Andrew Stanton, director and screenwriter, Toy Story 5, Disney announcement

For the 2027 Academy Awards, a film and its song submissions need a qualifying theatrical run between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2026. June 19 sits inside that window. Because the track was written to roll over the closing credits, a newer rule also asks that an end-credit song overlap the last 15 seconds of the picture before the credits start. If the studio submits it and the mix meets that cut, Swift would be in the original-song race for the first time. That is the quieter reason to put the song in front of academy voters in October.

A $14 Million Night, After $12 Million Last Year

Figures given after Saturday’s gala put the haul at more than $14 million for exhibitions, education programs, screenings, K-12 work and public access in Los Angeles. Last year’s fifth gala, honoring Penélope Cruz, Walter Salles, Bruce Springsteen and Bowen Yang, raised over $12 million for the same slate of work.

The museum bills itself as the largest in the world devoted to the arts, sciences and artists of moviemaking. It opened in 2021. The gala is now its main annual ask, timed after fashion month, and it has picked up a West Coast nickname it does not print on the invitations. What it prints is the mission line, then a guest list that pulls actors who may be asking for votes later in the season.

Swift’s fee, if there was one, was not disclosed. The return the museum can count is the $14 million and the photographs. The return it may want is a younger donor base and a closer who arrives with a film credit, not only a catalogue.

Springsteen Closed the Same Room Last October

A musician in the last slot is not new here. On Oct. 19, 2025, Martin Scorsese presented Springsteen with the inaugural Legacy Award, and George Clooney introduced a three-song close: “Streets of Philadelphia,” “Atlantic City” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Springsteen was an honoree who then sang. Swift was a closer who did not take a trophy.

That is the difference the dress coverage flattened. Last year the museum wrapped a film-music life into an award, then let the songs follow. This year it hired the biggest pop songwriter alive, handed her a Pixar end-credit track, and sat her down in a voter room after Carpenter, Theron and Domingo had already been toasted.

The 14-time Grammy winner has been stacking film-adjacent work all year: the Toy Story single, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore on Sept. 25, a director honor, a video with Johnson and Farrell. The gala did not invent that turn. It gave it a Hollywood institutional address.

The museum has posted no stream of the set. What remains in public is the ice-blue carpet, the $14 million, and a few phone clips of “Love Story.” The Oscar original-song list is still months away.