The 1988 Daytona 500 was the first stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 30th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, February 14, 1988, before an audience of 135,000 in Daytona Beach, Florida at Daytona International Speedway, a 2.5 miles (4.0 km) permanent triangular-shaped superspeedway. The race took the scheduled 200 laps to complete. In the final laps of the race, Stavola Brothers Racing's Bobby Allison managed to fend off his son, Ranier-Lundy Racing's Davey Allison to the finish to take his 84th and final career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory, his only victory of the season, and his third Daytona 500 victory. Jackson Bros. Motorsports' Phil Parsons rounded out the top three.

The Daytona 500 is a 500-mile-long (805 km) NASCAR Cup Series motor race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is the first of two Cup races held every year at Daytona, the second being the Coke Zero Sugar 400, and one of three held in Florida, with the annual fall showdown Dixie Vodka 400 being held at Homestead south of Miami. From 1988 to 2019, it was one of the four restrictor plate races on the Cup schedule. The inaugural Daytona 500 was held in 1959 coinciding with the opening of the speedway and since 1982, it has been the season-opening race of the Cup series.