2005 Dakar Rally also known as the 2005 Paris-Dakar Rally was the 27th running of the Dakar Rally event. The 2005 event was 5,565 miles (8,956 km) long, began in Barcelona on 31 December 2004 and passed through Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali before ending at Dakar in Senegal on 16 January 2005. The course was shorter than in 2004 but was more challenging. A record number of competitors, 696 cars, motorbikes and trucks in total, entered the rally.

The Dakar Rally or simply "The Dakar", formerly known as the "Paris–Dakar Rally", is an annual rally raid organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation. Most events since the inception in 1978 were staged from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. Security threats in Mauritania led to the cancellation of the 2008 rally, and events from 2009 to 2019 were held in South America. Since 2020, the rally has been held in Saudi Arabia. The event is open to amateur and professional entries, professionals typically making up about eighty percent of the participants.