The Ballon d'Or award is an annual football award for the best player from the previous year. Up until 1995 it was awarded only to football players from Europe and was generally known as the European Footballer of the Year award.

One of Marco van Basten's Ballon d'Or, on display at the Mondo Milan MuseumOne of Marco van Basten's Ballon d'Or, on display at the Mondo Milan Museum

Below are the nominees in the final order after voting for the 1988 award. The winner was Dutch player Marco van Basten, the first of his three awards. He also won in 1989 and 1992. See the list of all Ballon d'Or winners.

Final order for the men's 1988 Ballon d'Or

Order Player Club Nationality Points
1 Marco van Basten Milan Netherlands 129
2 Ruud Gullit Milan Netherlands 88
3 Frank Rijkaard Milan Netherlands 45
4 Oleksiy Mykhaylychenko Dynamo Kyiv Soviet Union 41
5 Ronald Koeman PSV Eindhoven Netherlands 39
6 Lothar Matthäus Internazionale West Germany 10
7 Gianluca Vialli Sampdoria Italy 7
8 Franco Baresi Milan Italy 5
  Jürgen Klinsmann VfB Stuttgart West Germany 5
  Oleksandr Zavarov Juventus Soviet Union 5
11 Tanju Çolak Galatasaray Turkey 4
  Oleh Kuznetsov Dynamo Kyiv Soviet Union 4
13 Rinat Dasayev Sevilla Soviet Union 3
  Anatoliy Demyanenko Dynamo Kyiv Soviet Union 3
  Glenn Hysén Fiorentina Sweden 3
  Míchel Real Madrid Spain 3
17 Flemming Povlsen 1. FC Köln Denmark 2
  Michel Preud'homme Mechelen Belgium 2
  Walter Zenga Internazionale Italy 2
20 Gheorghe Hagi Steaua București Romania 1
  Roberto Mancini Sampdoria Italy 1
  Dejan Savićević Red Star Belgrade Yugoslavia 1
  Neville Southall Everton Wales 1
  Dragan Stojković Red Star Belgrade Yugoslavia 1