For a brief moment on Saturday, I was Vinicius Jr scoring a sublime rocket of a goal against Morocco. No, I’ve not lost it in the brief UK sun; I was watching the World Cup using the new BBC 3D World Cup app, and it’s utterly brilliant. This isn’t traditional sports broadcasting, or even the kind of Unreal Engine sports tech we've seen before, but it looks like a football match dropped into a game engine, and it’s live, in real time (okay, there’s a few seconds delay).
Launching for FIFA World Cup 2026 on the BBC Sport website and app, BBC 3D World Cup lets you move around inside a real-time 3D recreation of the match as it happens – switch viewpoints, track individual players, zoom out to see team shape and formations, watch the Football Manager-like overview map, and generally experience football in a way we've never really had access to before. In my case, I watched in first-person as Brazil’s mercurial No.7 cut inside the defenders and zinged a shot.
