The embodiments of the present disclosure relate to the technical field of virtual reality, and disclose a free viewing method for a three-dimensional video and an electronic device. In some embodiments of the present disclosure, respective rotation matrices of a current viewpoint in three dimensional directions are calculated; a current viewing orientation is calculated according to the rotation matrices in the three dimensional directions and an original viewing orientation; an orientation matrix of a viewer is calculated according to the current viewing orientation; a three-dimensional video is played by using an inverse matrix of the calculated orientation matrix as a position of a three-dimensional video in the coordinate system of the viewer. Adopting the embodiments of the present disclosure enables the display of a three-dimensional video to automatically adapt to a current viewpoint position of a user along with free change of the position of the user.