We are interested in Pontryagin’s stochastic maximum principle of controlled McKean–Vlasov stochastic differential equations. We allow the law to be anticipating, in the sense that, the coefficients (the drift and the diffusion coefficients) depend not only of the solution at the current time t, but also on the law of the future values of the solution PX(t+δ)" role="presentation">PX(t+δ), for a given positive constant δ" role="presentation">δ. We emphasise that being anticipating w.r.t. the law of the solution process does not mean being anticipative in the sense that it anticipates the driving Brownian motion. As an adjoint equation, a new type of delayed backward stochastic differential equations (BSDE) with implicit terminal condition is obtained. By using that the expectation of any random variable is a function of its law, our BSDE can be written in a simple form. Then, we prove existence and uniqueness of the solution of the delayed BSDE with implicit terminal value, i.e. with terminal value being a function of the law of the solution itself.