Published : 06 Oct 2026, 04:30 PM
Updated : 06 Oct 2026, 04:30 PM
Lionel Messi has spent more than two decades finding ways past some of football's toughest defenders. His animated alter ego is about to face considerably bigger opposition.
The first teaser for "Messi and the Giants", a Disney sports-fantasy series executive produced by the Argentina great, has offered a proper look at a world where football meets fantasy — and a 12-year-old named Leo must take on giants to find his way home.
The series is due to premiere globally on Disney+ in summer 2027 and will also air on Disney Channel in the US.
Disney unveiled the teaser before more than 3,000 fans at San Diego Comic-Con Málaga in Spain, revealing more about a project first announced several years ago.
Rather than retelling Messi's career, the series follows Leo, an ordinary 12-year-old with an extraordinary talent for football.
He becomes trapped in Iko, an alternate world ruled by giants.
Getting home will require something resembling football, although not quite as Messi knows it.
Leo must compete in high-stakes, football-like battles using powerful objects called "orbs", defeat legendary giants and help restore Iko's fractured realms.
There is another complication: his opponents can use special "code powers" to supercharge their abilities. Leo cannot.
Instead, Disney says he must rely on skill, teamwork and determination — qualities drawn from the values associated with Messi's career.
And the teaser suggests the fantasy will go well beyond giant opponents.
Milo Burgess-Webb, the young Argentine actor voicing Leo, described an adventure featuring "fierce giants, a robot ball" and even "a lizard that plays guitar".
The football sequences feature "plays from another planet", he said.
"We had to get the role right," executive producer Lacey Stanton said of casting the protagonist. "Our Leo had to be special like Lionel Messi."
The series has been years in the making, with executive producer Sergi Reitg saying the idea began taking shape around five years ago, when Messi was still at Barcelona.
Messi serves as an executive producer, alongside his late father Jorge Messi Perez, who is credited in memoriam.
Argentine singer Luck Ra performs the original theme song, "Vamos, Vamos, Vamos", while 13 original songs have been developed for the series.
For Messi, the project is intended to carry some of football's lessons into a very different setting.
When Disney acquired the series in 2024, he said he wanted to be involved in something that could pass the values of sport on to younger generations.
"Nothing truly is impossible with teamwork, perseverance, discipline, and hard work," Messi said at the time.
He also had a simpler reason for getting involved: he grew up loving animated series and wanted something he could watch with his own children.
Each episode will run for about 22 minutes, with Disney describing the story as a coming-of-age adventure built around courage, perseverance and believing in yourself.
The first look arrives as Messi prepares to close one of the defining chapters of his real-life football career, with Argentina staging his international farewell against Benin at the Monumental in Buenos Aires.
But on screen, a younger Leo is only beginning his adventure.
And after a career spent making defenders look small, Messi's latest football-inspired challenge has finally found opponents who tower over him.
