The winner was Switzerland with the song "Ne partez pas sans moi", composed by Atilla Şereftuğ, written by Nella Martinetti and performed by Céline Dion.

The 1988 contest took place in Dublin, Ireland, following the country's victory at the 1987 edition with the song "Hold Me Now", performed by Johnny Logan.

[4] However, a number of weeks before the event, it was discovered that the song selected to represent Cyprus, "Thimame", written by John Vickers and Aristos Moschovakis and sung by Yiannis Dimitrou, had previously competed in the 1984 Cypriot national selection under the title "San to rok-en-rol", and was therefore ineligible to compete at Eurovision.

[12] Additionally, Finland's Boulevard had previously performed as the backing group for the previous year's Finnish entrant Vicky Rosti, and among Yardena Arazi's backing vocalists was Yehuda Tamir and Reuven Gvirtz [he], members of the Israeli group Milk and Honey which had won the 1979 contest.

[15] The Eurovision Song Contest 1988 was produced by the Irish public broadcaster Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ).

[18][19][20] On behalf of the contest organisers, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the event was overseen by Frank Naef as executive supervisor.

[27][28] The traditional physical scoreboard was replaced by a computer-generated version, displayed on two video walls constructed on either side of the stage.

[2][18][28] The stage design, which created an illusion of depth, alongside tight camera shots of the audience and creative lighting use, resulted in an overall impression that the contest was being held in a vast and packed arena, rather than the modest space of the Simmonscourt Pavilion.

[37] The points awarded by each country were determined by an assembled jury of sixteen individuals, who were all required to be members of the public with no connection to the music industry, split evenly between men and women and across four age groups: 15–25; 26–35; 36–45; and 46–60.

The votes of each member were collected following the country's performance and then tallied by the non-voting jury chairperson to determine the points to be awarded.

In any cases where two or more songs in the top ten received the same number of votes, a show of hands by all jury members was used to determine the final placing.

[44] The interval act was the Irish rock group Hothouse Flowers, with a music video of their song "Don't Go"; the group's lead singer Liam Ó Maonlaí also appeared on stage before the music video played to explain the meaning behind the song – first in Irish, then in English – while playing the piano.

[47] The winner was Switzerland represented by the song "Ne partez pas sans moi", composed by Atilla Şereftuğ, written by Nella Martinetti and performed by Céline Dion.

With three countries left to vote the United Kingdom had a fifteen-point lead over Switzerland, however this gap was closed to only five points going into the final jury.

[35] Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their viewers.

[35][64][65] 33 commentary booths were constructed for the event, and it was expected that the contest would be relayed by over 40 television and radio broadcasters, with an estimated audience of 600 million viewers.

[18] While Dion had been known in her native Canada and in France before the contest,[18] and although her Eurovision winning song was not a big success in singles charts across Europe, winning the contest did provide a sizeable boost to her global platform, and reportedly allowed for her manager and future husband René Angélil to successfully renegotiate to increase the budget four-fold for her first English-language album, Unison.

One of 14 entries chosen to compete, "Ne partez pas sans moi" ultimately finished in tenth place.