The 1988–89 Yorkshire Cup was the eighty-first occasion on which the Yorkshire Cup rugby league competition was held.

Leeds won the trophy by beating the previous season's runner-up, Castleford, with a score of 33-12.
The match was played at Elland Road, Leeds, now in West Yorkshire. The attendance was 22,968 and receipts were £83,591.
This was the sixth time in an eleven-year period in which Castleford, previously only winners once (in 1977), made eight appearances in the Yorkshire Cup final, winning four and finishing runners-up on the other four occasions. It was also the second season in succession that Castleford appeared, and lost, in the final within that eleven-year period.

In the 1988–89 season there were no junior/amateur clubs taking part, no new entrants and no "leavers" and so the total of entries remained the same at eighteen.
As a result, a preliminary round was required to reduce the number of clubs entering the first round to sixteen.

^[1]

1 * The first Yorkshire Cup match played by the newly renamed Huddersfield who dropped the "Barracudas"'s suffix
2 * The record score (and highest winning margin) at the time for a Yorkshire Cup match, beating the previous record win of 79-5 (1948)
3 * The receipts are given as £76,658 by the Rothmans Rugby League Yearbook of 1991-92^[3] and 1990-91^[4] but the details given in a section of the Huddersfield v Ryedale-York match programme^[6][7] for the preliminary round on Sunday 23 August 1992 (and all verified by The Rugby League Record Keepers Club), show the receipts as £83,591

• 1988–89 Rugby Football League season
• Rugby league county cups