Events from the year 1788 in Scotland.

• 31 January – Henry Benedict Stuart becomes the new Stuart claimant to the throne of Great Britain as King Henry IX and the figurehead of Jacobitism.
• 14 March – the Edinburgh Evening Courant carries a notice of £200 reward for capture of William Brodie, town councillor doubling as a burglar.
• 27 August – trial of William Brodie begins in Edinburgh. He is sentenced to death by hanging.
• 1 October – William Brodie hanged at the Tolbooth in Edinburgh.
• 14 October – William Symington demonstrates a paddle steamer on Dalswinton Loch near Dumfries.^[1][2]
• Tobermory, Mull, and Ullapool are founded as herring ports by the British Fisheries Society to the designs of Thomas Telford.
• Flax mills established at Brigton in Angus and Inverbervie in Kincardineshire.
• Lowland Licence Act restricts exports of Scottish gin to England, effectively requiring a one-year pause in the trade.
• St Gregory's Church, Preshome, designed by Father John Reid, is built.
• Ring of bells cast for the new steeple of St Andrew's Church in New Town, Edinburgh, the oldest complete ring in Scotland.
• General Register House in Edinburgh, designed by Robert Adam and begun in 1774, is opened to the public.^[3]
• The estate house at Yair is built.
• Encyclopædia Britannica Third Edition begins publication in Edinburgh.

• 31 January – John Ewart, architect and businessman in North America (died 1856 in Canada)
• April – George Ferguson, naval officer (died 1867 in London)
• 15 May – Neil Arnott, physician (died 1874 in London)
• 29 August – Ranald George Macdonald, clan chief and politician (died 1873 in London)
• 2 September – John Strange, merchant and politician in Canada (died 1840 in Canada)
• 13 October – Thomas Erskine, lawyer and revisionary Calvinist theologian (died 1870)
• 11 November – Thomas Francis Kennedy, lawyer and politician (died 1879)
• 31 December – Basil Hall, naval officer and explorer (died 1844 in Portsmouth)
• David Lennox, builder of stone bridges in Australia (died 1873 in Australia)
• Charles Mackenzie, diplomat and journalist (died 1862 in the United States)
• George Mudie, social reformer
• James Thompson, Baptist pastor and educator in South America (died 1854 in London)

• 31 January – Charles Edward Stuart, claimant to the British throne (born 1720, and died, in Italy)
• 14 June – Adam Gib, Secession Church leader (born 1714)
• 15 October – Samuel Greig, admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy (born 1736; died in Tallinn)

• December – Robert Burns writes his version of the Scots poem Auld Lang Syne.^[4] From Whitsun he has been tenant of Ellisland Farm.
• William Collins publishes Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland.^[5]

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1788 in Great Britain