The 1988 FIA Formula One World Championship was the 42nd season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It featured the 1988 Formula One World Championship for Drivers and the 1988 Formula One World Championship for Constructors, which were contested concurrently over a sixteen-race series that commenced on 3 April and ended on 13 November. The World Championship for Drivers was won by Ayrton Senna, and the World Championship for Constructors by McLaren-Honda. Senna and McLaren teammate Alain Prost won fifteen of the sixteen races between them; the only race neither driver won was the Italian Grand Prix, where Ferrari's Gerhard Berger took an emotional victory four weeks after the death of team founder Enzo Ferrari. McLaren's win tally has only been bettered or equalled in seasons with more than sixteen races; their Constructors' Championship tally of 199 points, more than three times that of any other constructor, was also a record until 2002.

Incredibly, of the 14 races Alain Prost finished in 1988 he would record seven wins and seven second places, yet it wasn't enough to win the championship. His wins total equaled the single season record he himself had equalled in 1984 (Jim Clark had won 7 races in 1963) when he had also lost the world championship to then McLaren teammate Niki Lauda. However, unlike Lauda who scored 5 wins and it was his regular points finishes that gave him his 3rd championship, the wins record now belonged to Senna who finished with eight wins. Senna also set the single season pole winning record by claiming the fastest time on thirteen occasions during the year, finishing the season with 29 career pole positions, only four behind the record, which was another held by the great Jim Clark.

In Adelaide, FOCA boss Bernie Ecclestone summed up the season by saying that what McLaren had actually done was nothing more than their usual professional job and that they didn't really do anything exceptional. With the Honda turbo they clearly had the best engines, and in Senna and Prost they had the two best drivers. The problem was that just about every other team performed well below par and the McLarens were rarely challenged. He then jokingly added that all the teams, including McLaren, would have to up their performance in 1989 as Brabham (which he had sold to EuroBrun owner Walter Brun) would be back in Formula One.

While the McLaren-Honda cars had dominated the 1988 Formula One season like no-one had before, the FIA's rules to limit turbo cars' boost and fuel tank size had the desired effect of bringing the atmospheric cars back into contention. This was shown by front row starts for Nigel Mansell in Brazil and Hungary, as well as three second-place and eight third-place finishes for the non-turbo cars, and on each occasion that a non-turbo car finished on the podium, the only cars to finish in front of them were the all-conquering McLaren-Hondas.