One of the most popular methods to extract useful information from an image sequence is the template matching approach. In this well known method the tracking of a certain feature or target over time is based on the comparison of the content of each image with a sample template. We propose a 3D template matching algorithm that is able to track targets corresponding to the projection of 3D surfaces. With only a few hundred subtractions and multiplications per frame, our algorithm provides, in real time, an estimation of the 3D surface pose. The key idea is to compute the difference between the current image content and the visual aspect of the target under the predicted spatial attitude. This difference image is converted into corrections on the 3D location parameters.